Friday Saturday 8th February - English Winter

And English winter really just means rain, here in the South. If I were an Eeyore, I would say it was just like the English Spring, and Summer, and Autumn too. But I'm not. (And yes, I am thinking it, even if I am saying it.)

Here's what outside looks like

The only saving grace is that wonderful, wonderful amaryllis. Both flower spikes are fully open now.

The best Eeyore is Geoffrey Palmer. With Judi Dench as the Narrator and Kanga. Here they are, on youtube. These stories, with this cast, are on my mp3 player for when I am not sleeping in the middle of the night. Although I am listening to Ngaio Marsh 'Death in Ecstasy' which is one of the very silliest of all of her 'Inspector Alleyn' stories. It is taking me a long time, as I fall asleep after a couple of tracks and wake up several hours later to silence. Then, the next evening, I find the last bit that I can remember and listen to the next ten minutes.

The cats are learning to share the settee. It has to be done carefully, making sure each cat knows that the other one is there. and No Sudden Movements allowed by anyone. Leo likes to be wrapped up, and McCavity likes to be on top of the pile of blanket.

It's not an entirely satisfactory result because now I have nowhere to sit. So I am blogging instead, and listening to the story 'In which Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents'.

This morning, He took the Panda to the vet tyre depot, as the front right tyre is leaking air. This was problematic, as I needed to go to a village school to demonstrate what a fun instrument the descant recorder is, to recruit some more pupils. Luckily a friend was willing to provide a taxi service, and lurk in the school car park while I went from class to class, and bring me home. I need to recruit at least two, and preferably about six children to make up my hours.

The tyre depot were very inconclusive, their unconsidered  advice being that we should take to Panda to their contacts in the next town and have the alloy rims refurbished. We'll get a second opinion before we go down that route, and meanwhile just keep on pumping up the tyre.

I'm testing the recipe for Slovenian honey biscuits for the Women's World Day of Prayer coffee morning at the end of the month.

 So far, so good, apart from forgetting to glaze the second batch with beaten white of egg. I'm too impatient to roll the dough out and play with cookie cutters, so I just formed the dough into a long sausage and cut off slices. The final result is supposed to look like this;

The line missing off the bottom is 'bake for 10-15 minutes, leave to cool on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack'. Then you ice them - I'm wondering if that would be a fun interactive activity for the people attending the coffee morning? No, I thought not. The biscuits are supposed to keep for a fortnight in an airtight tin, or longer in the freezer. I reckon I'll get around 30 biscuits from my sausages. 

Right, that's all for now, folks - I'll save the adventure of 'not enough petrol and I haven't brought my purse out with me' for another day - the moral of that tale is that it is not a bad plan to stash some cash somewhere out of sight in your car. Which I had. (Stashed some cash, for car parking). So I didn't. (Run out of petrol). So it wasn't. (An adventure).

Monday 4th February - happy

Keyboard

   The keyboard is fine!

Cats

The cats are slowly coming to the realisation that it is perfectly okay for them to share a piece of furniture. McCavity is in her usual place, and Leo is in MY place

Thursday 1st February

McCavity is in her alternative place, on a 'catmat' fleecy square wedged on top of the radiator behind the settee, and Leo on the seat (in MY place). I have had to shift McCavity's hairy knitted cushion in order to sit at that end of the settee. 

Sunday 3rd February

There was nearly a 'cat'astrophe when McCavity decided to descend from her perch to nestle in the blue throw, not realising that Leo was happily snoozing inside the folds. I managed to get her to see that Leo was already there, so, reluctantly, McCavity chose a different route down to the floor.

Brexit  - NOT happy

I can't begin to discuss Brexit. Every day in every way it seems stupider and stupider. How did we get into such a mess. And don't tell me it will all end happily - too late for that with so many companies already relocated to Europe even BEFORE the outcome is settled, and people having to prove their right to stay in this country and  - I could go on for ever. 

Where are the rats who started this whole pantomime? Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Sunday 3rd Feb 2019 - Tea, biscuits, Sunday afternoon

Amaryllis

     I promised a picture of the amaryllis;

Saturday afternoon

It was the best part of the view out of the sitting room window yesterday -
six E N O R M O U S flowers on one stalk. I have no idea how the flowers that are even as I type emerging from the buds on the second stalk will find any room to expand their petals. I wondered what they looked like in the wild; there are pictures on the www.pacificbulbsociety.org website, but I haven't copied the pictures here as I expect they are copyright protected.

Today is a better day, weatherwise, but still cold. We considered going out, and we considered drinking tea and eating a biscuit or two, and here we are.

Sunday afternoon

Church

I was playing for the morning church service today (first Sunday of the month). I really do need to change my glasses, or at least get some kind of Very Strong reading glasses. I wear varifocals, and can't work out which lens to look through when I am reading the music. It seems to make no difference whether I look through the top, middle or bottom. Those little dots and squiggles scattered over the pages remain vanishingly small and wriggly.  Today I had the horrid experience of losing my place in the music halfway through the verse of the last song. I ploughed on using a mixture of memory, luck and  guesswork to get to then end; unfortunately I had forgotten what key we were in, but found my way home in what I hope was a musical manner.

Knitting (and a short 'tale of the unexpected')  

As part of making an effort to play less freecell, I have cast on stitches for a scarf using a ball of wool I bought back last Summer, when we were staying in a showman's caravan in Bodiam. We took the steam train to Tenterden, and, my oh my, there was a superb wool shop!

I had been resisting starting anything with this wool until I had finished a few other things and now seemed the opportunity. The wool is called 'zauberball'; I have an idea that 'zauber' is German for 'magic', and the wool 'magically' changes colourways as it unwinds. I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the attractions of yarn; watching the different colours slip through my fingers as I go.

The pattern for the scarf is only 'slightly' interesting, but that is the whole point - I play freecell because it is 'slightly' interesting, because it is repetitive, because it is easy, because (and after a long teaching day this is very important) it doesn't talk to me, ask questions, or require decisions and answers. Very much like this knitting
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
That was all a bit sudden. Somehow, as I put my mug of tea down it sort of bounced (how? dunno) and the tea leapt out of the mug and onto the keyboard. (I don't think it would be helpful to mention at this juncture that the keyboard needed a bit of a clean. )

He went from sitting semi-comatose in the chair beside me, reading a book, to full action stations in a nano second; emergency shut down of computer and cleaning tea out of the keyboard... which is now drying off in the airing cupboard for a while while I was still wondering what ha happened and how.

I have moved to another part of the sitting room and am using the laptop! Here's hoping that I haven't destroyed the keyboard.

Now, where was I?

I honestly can't remember. Except my mug is now empty; perhaps I should put the kettle on?

Friday 1st February - Birds, trees, flowers,

I've been looking forward to this Friday for  while - it's been nearly a fortnight since my last 'silent' day. As in 'all-by-myself' day. I need these from time to time to stay sane, or at least what counts as sane in my case.

So here I am; himself is out, and I am set up with tablet, fleecy blanket, cat, coffee, Kindle, snacks, writing book and pen, flask...

I have got as far as breakfast (in bed) bath (in the bath) and putting clothes on (me).

Flowers

A surprisingly wonderful Christmas Present has been this amyrillis;

This photo was taken three days ago, and I only planted the bulb at the beginning of January. Today it has four huge, white blooms. You will have to wait until I go downstairs for a picture. I am not disturbing the cat Again.
So much energy and vitality concealed in such an unpromising bulb! Which reminds me, I need to check on those poor little iris bulb, which, according to the instructions, have to be shut away in a dark cupboard for TEN WEEKS after being planted. Last time I looked they were inches tall, all pale and loitering among the spare china and tablecloths.

Birds and trees

When I look out of the rather high window of the little music room I use on Mondays and Tuesdays, I can see a great expanse of sky, and the tops of a couple of oak trees. These are always full of starlings. At a first glance I don't spot them, but one or two will move, and suddenly the tree is alive with a score of black shapes shifting from twig to twig. Watching beguiles the minutes between pupils, or even moments when I need to 'count to ten' before responding to some playing (or behaviour) which needs a measured and effective approach to achieve  a positive result. 

'What are you looking at?' asked a provoking boy.

'The birds in the tree over there.' (is honesty always the best policy?)

'Why?'

'Because you are messing about and not listening to a word I say so I would rsthee watch the birds.' (Let's test this policy)

He was totally silenced (for a moment).

'Shall we have another go at those notes now?'

On Wednesdays I drive under a rookery. I was very concerned that the rooks were all checking out the nests a few weeks ago... too soon, too soon! They must have heard my thoughts as they were absent for a while. This week they were back as I drove to school at 9am; each nest had a black rook sitting beside it. When I returned along the same road several hours later they had all gone. Where?

On Thursday the week before last, driving along another road (did I write about this before?) I passed several trees each with about a dozen pigeons hunched among the bare branches. They were still there on my return. I've just remembered that a couple of years ago at about this time of year they were all crammed (not as many of them) into a small birch tree in the middle of a nearby roundabout. Odd.

It is remarkably difficult to draw small birds sitting in a tree on the tablet using just mt finger, but the stylus is downstairs. It is even harder to persuade the picture into the blog; in the end I took a photograph of the drawing using my phone.

Monday 28th January - Time flew!

Where did that week go?

For me it was quite a good week; seven piano pupils cancelled their lessons - I sympathise as most of them were away because they were unwell, but it meant I had three-and-a-half hours unexpected time off, in thirty-minute chunks. That made a huge difference to how I felt on Wednesday and Thursday evenings - as in 'pretty chipper' rather than 'zombified'. Food for thought when it comes to next year's schedule? But that is more than six months away in a whole future lifetime.

I'm following another www.futurelearn.com course; this time 'How to Read a Novel'. There's more to reading than just turning the pages, tha'knows. Last week's module all about dialogue, using a well-regarded tour-de-force as the text, which I found to be fairly unappealing. Luckily they shared the extracts that they wanted us to discuss, so I haven't had to read the whole book ('First Love', by Gwendoline Riley). Which is fortunate, as I have neither time nor inclination. There are other books I would like to read;

Ulysses by James Joyce - yes, really, it looks to be fascinating, and it is recommended that you obtain a map of Dublin before embarking upon the book.
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
Cousin Phyllis - Elizabeth Gaskell

and other books that I'm in the middle of;

The Portrait of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genesis - for the Bible Book Club. I've been listening to the audio version read by David Suchet.
I have been bought special 'sleephones'

to replace the knitted headphones that I have had for years, and that have given up working. They are much more comfortable. The opening chapter of Genesis (the creation) is so beautifully written and read that I don't really want to spoil it by going on to the next bit. In fact I fell asleep, woke up when Noah got off the Ark, and woke again when the story had reached Lot and his wife. This doesn't seem to be a good way of going about things. 
Holding - Graham Norton - for the other Book Club. Luckily I read 'Holding' last year, and can remember a lot of it, so I've just dipped in to remind myself how it goes.

Anyway, getting back to last week - however it started, it finished with a flourish;

On Friday we took my father, or he took us, depends on how you look at it; we went in our car anyway back to The Perch in Lancing. I had Moules - they came in a giant pot like this,

(only stainless steel and not labelled 'moules'), a whole kilo of them. I did manage to eat my way through about two-thirds, unlike my father who consumed them all. It's not as totally greedy as it sounds; a kilo has around 20-25 mussels, and roughly 250g of  shellfish.

None of us ate anything further that day.

On Saturday the offspring helped us eat a joint of lamb that had been bought for Christmas, but went into the freezer instead. It. Was. Delicious. Worth every penny of the ridiculous expense. (BB and I had decided that it was part of our Christmas Present to each other.)

On Sunday we used up some 2-for-1 tokens at Pizza Express (thank you, no 1 son) at lunchtime.

Now it is Monday again. A toasted sandwich and baked beans for lunch seemed a more than adequately sufficient meal in the light of the previous three days.

 Today looks like being a gentler day than it might have been - two pupils are unwell and one has a school rehearsal. So that's another hour-and-a-half off (in thirty minute chunks) which is how I have managed to put up a blog post!

Just three pupils left for this afternoon, and two this evening. A total of seven, instead of the usual ten!

Have a good week!

Friday 18th January 2019 - and another thing

The measurements that I mainly uses for evaluating the chaos coefficient currently applicable to my life are

what is getting forgotten?

the words of a chant that I taught year 4 - they soon put me right

did I leave my handbag in the office of the previous school - having spent the next ten miles working out if I need any of the contents before I can retrieve it the next morning, I discovered that I had put it in the boot after all

I have managed to walk past a card that needs to be posted every day this week

what daft things have I done?

opened an attachment from a dodgy email; subsequently come wide awake out of a strange dream about a row of nearly-dead dogs lying up-side-down under a shelf, only their eyes move, watching me, and related that dream to the dodgy email and woken husband so he can check the email and intercept whatever gremlins were crawling around our network. (It was ok, no gremlins)

what is the state of the dining room table?

this is the most accurate measurement of all;

And this is the only rational response.