Saturday 1st April - Book review 3

The Twentieth Day Of January - Ted Allbeury

This review seems particularly appropriate for today's date - I downloaded this book soon after the results of the American presidential elections were announced. The fictional scenario is that the newly elected president may be a Russian puppet, elected through the machinations of the Communist party. The intelligence services have just a couple of weeks to find out whether this is true before the President-Elect takes office.

Of course this is just yet another 'reds under the beds' spy thriller, written back in the dim and distant past - the 1980s. Pure fiction. Move along please. Nothing to see here.

Saturday 1st April - 'art'

I've a new art programme to play with. It will take ages to get used to; it's not a bit like using real paint and brushes. So far I'm finding 'oil paint' and 'palette knife' easiest to manipulate, in spite of the fact that I have never used either before in my life. That is apart from a failed attempt one Christmas a lot of years ago. That came to a sticky end when I trod on the painting with my bare feet when the oil was still wet.

Here's my first go - a random mountainy sort of scene...

and my second go, this time using a sort of 'felt pen' or maybe a 'pencil'

and finally back to oil and palette knife

This last is based on a photograph of fields behind Petworth. I started by tracing over the photograph, but soon abandoned that idea and kind of went my own way.

it's a lot cleaner and tidier than paint and paper...

Sunday 26th March - Mothering Sunday

Flowers from church;

and flowers from the offsprings;

These flowers will have to wait a while - I can't bear to plant the pencils until I've used them! They are made by http://sproutworld.com/us/ and here is what happens when you plant them;

Sunday 26th March - Three Men in a Boat

All about work

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.

And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.

But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat



Particularly the third paragraph.

Sunday 26th March - Book Reviews 2

Ink - Alice Broadway

Hmm. Not sure. Can't think what prompted me to get this - must have been a review I read somewhere.

Imagine a society where every event. from your birth onwards is tattooed on your skin. Then, when you die, your skin is removed (the word "flayed" is used too often for my comfort), preserved, and made into a book which your descendants keep at home, and read from time to time for comfort and to remember you by. That is, if your life has not been found to be unworthy and your book is flung into the fire and you become one of the "forgotten".

Imagine this society being at odds, if not quite at war, with the "blanks" - people who do not get tattoos to publicly display their lives. And there you have the starting scenario for the book.

Once you get past all the references to "flaying" and "marking" and "embracing the pain" of the tattooing, you can get on with the plot, which is about family secrets and what happens when secrets come out into the open.

Passing of the Third Floor Back - Jerome K Jerome

I downloaded this short story as a free pdf from somewhere or other, and promptly forgot that it was by Jerome K Jerome and became certain that it was by E F Benson. So, when I read it, I was a bit disappointed - there was none of the sharpness that I love in the "Mapp and Lucia" books. But when I was trying to find where I had downloaded it from, I "rediscovered" that it was by Jerome K Jerome. Aha! If you are not expecting E F Benson, then it is much better!

You can read up about the plot, and its varied history as a play and a silent film back in 1918 on wikipedia. An a bit of googling should lead you to somewhere you can download your own free pdf copy of the story.

Which leads me back to Jerome K Jerome - it's ages since I read "Three Men In A Boat". That might have to go onto the pending list, if only to revisit some favourite quotes...

This could be me;

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome

Here's someone else;

“I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

And another person;

“I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Sunday 26th March 2017 - Rescued from the doldrums by a ball of blue wool

Hi folks...

I'd have to go and get my diary from upstairs in order to remember what has been happening - these days I can barely remember yesterday, let alone last Monday.

I was feeling particularly bleah on Wednesday - it's kind of standard for mid-week, as Tuesday is my heaviest day of teaching. Five individual piano lessons at one school, then off to the next establishment where I bolt my lunch, refine my planning and then teach three primary school class music lessons, and then home just in time to make (but not drink) a cup of tea before another three piano lessons and a theory lesson. That's eight lessons which I consider to be my limit.

Anyway, on Wednesday I set off to the afternoon school feeling, as I said, a bit bleah. However, when I got home, my latest yarn delivery had arrived! Whoop whoop! It has taken me most of a month to finally make up my mind which pullover I was going to knit next, and which colour. It didn't take me long to cast on the stitches and get going. I know you are supposed to do a swatch first, but I figured that I would start knitting, and check the tension once there was enough length, promising myself that I would Definitely Start Again if it wasn't right. The fingers crossing thing seems to have worked (probably because I kept them un-crossed while I was actually doing the knitting) to I have carried on;

It's knitted from the neck down to the waist, on circular needles, which is why it looks a bit weird. I've got as far as the top of shoulders now; quite soon I shall have to pay proper attention to the pattern to work out what happens when the sleeves start happening.

The main advantage of all this knitting is that it is making it so much easier to keep to my Lent resolution of giving up FreeCell for Lent.

Although yesterday was a tricky moment for that; I couldn't knit or do too much with my hands as I had the first of a series of annual infusions of the amazingly named zolendronic acid to treat osteoporosis (which I've got as a consequence of the steroids, I guess). They did a really neat job at the hospital - once I was home there was barely a pin-prick to be seen, but I thought it was inadvisable to do too much. A bit of clicky-clicky on FreeCell would have been so relaxing, but I managed to hold back. I restricted myself to teaching just the one piano lesson, and the African Djembe lesson. Maybe the djembe session was a bit rash, but I did most of the drumming one handed.

Once I've finished this blogpost I shall get going on the pullover again - it is SO addictive, watching it grow.