Friday 3rd January - first day of my weekend

I don’t teach any piano kessons on Fridays anymore so my weekend starts on Friday now. Lovely. I persuaded myself to deal with various admin tasks in the morning, and spent the afternoon fiddling around with cross stitch designs. 

This is the picture I was thinking of doing, something I did in a diary;

The original is only about two inches tall, on a page in December 2019. A friend and I went for afternoon tea at an extremely posh hotel near us. We'd both had a pretty tough couple of months, so treating ourselves and having a long catch up was a good way to finish the year.

It was getting dark when we left, and I took a couple of pictures on my phone as we left;

to remind myself of the day, and these became the little painting. 

There's something about silhouetted trees against the inky shaded sky that I just love looking at.

A couple of hours has convinced me that I don't yet have the knowledge and experience to turn my paintings into a cross stitch grid. I'll adapt a kit this time around, and learn from that.

I shall turn my attention to 'Death in Paradise' on the TV and relax with some knitting instead.

Monday 5th December - Another step along the way to Christmas

 

The little tree is decorated. This must be the earliest we have ever completely decorated the Christmas tree in years,

And the better of the 5ft Christmas trees that seemed to be breeding in the loft has been collected.  I added a carrier bag of baubles which are surplus to requirements and also too large for the new tree. I have kept the woolworths baubles which have come out every year since we married.

Back then we were living on an extremely tight budget, so those six baubles, three pieces of tinsel and a small artificial tree was all that we could afford. The tree and tinsel disintegrated decades ago, but the baubles live on as a memory of that first Christmas. 

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We spent the day in London,  another routine appointment.  Cardiology this time. Everything went well, the driving, finding ourway to a different part of the labyrinthine hospital buildings, and the consultation. In other words, no marked change, carry on as before. The consultant approves of marching on the spot as an alternative to outdoor exercise when it is too cold or wet so I will continue to get my steps in that way, 

 

Saturday 3rd December - the Christmas Tree fiasco

 It appears that we currently have 4 artificial Christmas trees in the house. If I think really hard I think I can account for them all, although initially I did wonder what weirdness had been going on in the attic all year.

This is the 6ft pre-lit tree that we bought a number of years ago. Last year I found it was becoming very tiring to decorate it. I took most of the month (this picture was taken on 2nd Dec last year) and I resorted to decorating thexside facing me, cautiously turning the whole tree round, and doing the other side a few days later.

So, in the interests of downsizing, we bought a 4ft replacement,  considerably smaller but much easier to decorate. Here it is at about the same stage as the tree above;

However we discovered two more 5ft trees in the loft! I've already offered the pre-lit one on the church email group and it will be collected tomorrow.

I can account for one of the 5ft trees; for a couple of years the pre-lit tree and its powerpack were separated after one Christmas, so we bought another tree. But how did that other tree get there?

Anyway, I shall send round another email tomorrow,  and if there are no takers then I'm sure a charity shop will accept them.

Thursday 17th December - Christmas Tree

 Oh. My. Word. Just a week until Christmas Eve.

Yesterday we gave up waiting for the new lights to be delivered, that we had planned to arrange around the bay windows. So instead, Himself and I cleaned the bay windows  (you might remember that cleaning all the windows in the house was my project for - was it September? August? Just one window left to do now, might leave that for Spring cleaning before Easter). 

Today we put up the tree. And decorated it. Well, most of it. There's still one side left to do. We've turned the tree so that from the street and from this side it looks okay; 

it's just looking a bit plain from the other side;

I don't know what has happened to the bag of 'tree tinsel'; bits of every different length that I lay along the branches. I can hear my mother saying 'the tinsel should look like snow lying on the branches'; we NEVER had it going round and round the tree like the pictures in books. Each piece had to be draped individually. Then the baubles, 'just red and silver - put those yellow and blue and green and purple ones round the back', and the finally silver lametta. 'Just a few strands at a time, hang them over the tips of the branches, work up from the bottom, until the tree looks as though it is covered in icicles'.

I have broken with this tradition by not having any tinsel, and I have gold, as well as silver and red baubles. You may be wondering why I haven't mentioned lights; about four or five years ago we bought a 5'6" artificial 'pre-lit' tree.

This year is the first year I have really struggled to decorate the tree, balancing on the step stool and reaching up and over to hang the baubles and so on. We have thought up a Cunning Plan; the tree is made in three sections, plugged together. We shall experiment when it comes to putting it away, and see if it is possible to assemble just the top two sections.

I never thought I would hear myself say it, but maybe, just maybe, a smaller tree might be an idea... 

I haven't attempted today's Advent tea...

or yesterday's Advent tea... I lack a spirit of adventure at the moment.

Yesterday, Wednesday, got off to a slow start; me and the cat, us two, had a bit of a lie-in, all very warm and cosy. Might do the same again tomorrow...

Sunday 26th April - Nearly another week

And how time does fly...

It seems that my extended 'holiday' is over; and I'm getting a real taste of 'working from home', which is what other members of my family have been doing all along. Did they get a long weekend over Easter, or just keep going, through the Bank Holidays, I wonder? As I have been freelance piano teaching for so long, I find it impossible to separate out 'work time' and 'non-work' time. There has always been 'teaching time', 'travelling between schools time' and then hours of admin as a consequence of teaching, all done 'as and when'.

Last week I taught zoom piano lessons on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That part of my decision-making about which days I would work and which I would not, went well. Then came 'how many lessons a day?. In 'normal times', this could be anything up to 12, starting around 9 or 9.30, and finishing around 6 or 6.30, with longer or shorter gaps between schools and home.

Zoom lessons are another kettle of fish - for a start a 30 minute lesson uses up 45 minutes of time, geting the connection sorted out, finding music, arranging the tablets or computers or phones, and the actual lesson is very distracted; glitches in the conversations and piano playing require more concentration, and it is harder to get things across. I decided on a maximum of four lessons per day, so I am quite pleased to have kept it down to five a day so far.

Each lesson then generates another load of activity - emails to set up the next lesson (I know you can schedule repeat 'meetings' but the parents are still finding their way through the home school schedules), and detailed 'lesson notes', as the students haven't yet mastered the art of making their own notes - that will definitely be a teaching point in the near future - and then checking that the payments have come through. Then I need to write up my own notes and keep a tally for income tax purposes next April. Finally, I need to tidy up! After a day of teaching there is music everywhere! Three days of zoom piano teaching is plenty at the moment.

After the peace and quiet of the previous few weeks it felt as I had gone from this;

http://photoeverywhere.co.uk/tropical_escape/slides/tropical_sandy_beach.htm

to something more like this!

https://guidetoiceland.is/travel-info/river-rafting-in-iceland

That's work... but also I have been on three outings since Tuesday.

Our house backs on to a network of cycle tracks and footpaths through woodland and a golf course. Well, we've been waking up ridiculously early these past few days. I suspect it's because quite a few neighbours are on shift work. On Friday we looked at each other at 5.30 am, made the decision and were out on a walk by 6am! Unheard of!

But it was a really good idea. We managed to force our way through the 'shrubbery' - ie laurels gone wild - that conceals our back gate and emerge into the early sunlight. There were very few people around, so keeping 2m away from people was not a problem, even at 'pinch points' like the bridges over the stream. We didn't go far, just 'there and back' and home for breakfast.

I don't know how many times you have to go out to make it a habit. Saturday morning dawned dull and uninviting, but brightened up into 'Summer' by the afternoon. Himself usually route marches round to the post box every day with a card for a housebound friend, but this I time went too. It was the usual intricate game of gently swerving to avoid other people out enjoying the sunshine - like one of those milder computer games where you try not to crash into obstacles. I was delighted to see this  just near the corner shop;

Morning constitutionals were not possible this morning, as there was zoom church and I was playing one of the songs so couldn't be late for church today (How Deep the Father's Love). After lunch however, instead of posting the card, I printed off a free Johanna Basford colouring book which you can get from her website here  Just click on the picture (on HER page, not mine!)

We then walked round to the address where I send the cards; she's a good friend in her 80s, but not a computer using so it is phone, text or letter to contact her. But she only lives a mile away - further thanI like to walk when it is cold and dreary, but today was great - warm, sunny... So, with Himself scouting the way ahead to warn of obstancles on the form of walkers, joggers and cyclists so that I could give everyone a wide berth, we enjoyed a very pleasant afternoon.

The Johanna Basford drawings are all rather whimsical, but I find them useful for ideas. I took these photographs of a tree ready to be copied and embellished

and this pattern of leaves, maybe for the embellishments - who knows.

That's three times in a row we have gone out for a walk...

And it has made me Very Hungry for my supper!

Friday 4th January - Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It's off to work we go.....

with a box of chocolates to share with my colleagues at a training day all about the new electronic keyboard syllabus

no, not that one, this sort



I'm still not convinced that they are such a beautiful musical instrument. When the guy started playing a Beethoven slow movement with extra strings, gentle drum beat, and other special effects, my first and only thought was 'please, no, make it stop'. But they are a good, cheap, useful instrument to learn. At least I don't have any keyboard pupils. (yet).

Before I went to work, we completed the next phase of un-Christmas-ing the house. Remember the before and after pictures from yesterday?

We decided the easiest way of getting the tree out of the house was to dismember it, removing several large tubs of branches first.

Going...

Going...

Pretty much gone.

I've never had a tree shed so many needles before. Because of the saga regarding the artificial tree (still can't find the power pack) we bought the real tree relatively close to Christmas. We have a super-duper ultra clever tree clamp and water reservoir contraption -  having laboriously filled it with water one everything was in position, we discovered that the tree had failed to use any, even though we had removed several inches from the base. It had obviously been hanging around at the garden centre for too long.   

Never mind - it lasted long enough.

We've still got strings of lights and cards and other decorations scattered around the room - but there's tomorrow evening, and anything left after twelfth night can stay until Candlemas.

The room looks much lighter without the tree. It took MacCavity maybe thirty seconds to emerge from her secret place under the harpsichord and reclaim her spot on the corner of the chest. Leo remained curled up on her chair at the other end of the room. 'There is no tree. Nothing is happening.' and as a last resort, like the owl in 'The Sword in the Stone'....'There is no cat.'  It is evening now, and I think she may Still be on the chair...