Sunday 6th October

I saved this prayer from the opening of a service at the zoom church in Leics that I join on Sundays;

  

Saturday 5th October

The little commonplace booklet I made for my father dropped through his letterbox today. I don't know what he was expecting but he was a mixture of pleased and puzzled by the random mixture of content.

I've asked him to go through and mark the items that he liked, and cross out the ones that he didn't enjoy, so I can tailor it more closely to his likes and dislikes. I suspect he would prefer it to contain more family anecdotes and pictures which might take a bit of thinking about.

I spent a good deal of time this morning going through my copies of his paperwork and filing it so that I can help to manage his affairs. Every piece of paper I picked up seemed to throw up more questions!  

Dear readers, if you are of 'a certain age', do consider creating what this lady in her blog calls a 'Going Away Box'!

My father told us all to create one after a talk at his Probus club meeting about 20 years ago. I think he started one.... but.... it's a lot easier to get this all sorted out while you've still got lots of energy (and memory)!

After lunch we went to the Prairie Gardens for some much needed fresh air. Just look at those blue skies!

I love the colour of these Michaelmas daisies - a really pretty pink

I took this picture to remind me of the grasses and seed heads, a big feature at this time of year

A last look back, after tea and cake (lemon, gooseberry and elderflower). We were standing by the gate leading to the car park.

And the entrance gate; I'm standing by the car

The garde will close for the season after next weekend. I hope we can get a visit or two in before then. They will leave the grasses and seed heads standing all through the winter for the birds. Then in February, they will set fire 🔥 to all the plants! 

Once everything has regrown, or been replanted, from seeds and cuttings they raise themselves, it will be ready to reopen in June.

Friday 4th October

Good evening 

As explained at the end of my illustrative journaling page for today, I'm sitting in my pyjamas, even though it's only half past six,  but it is after our tea.

The prompt for was outfit of the day.

I'm celebrating reaching the end of the Monday-Friday part of the week with a little glass of port and a couple of cheesy snacks. The chocolates are ready for 'chocolate o'clock' a little later on this evening. 

I found my list of sizes for the simple two-rectangle poncho;

Reading through the sizes, I realised that it hardly matters what you do provided the two rectangles are the same!

I copied the sizes from a friend's proper bought pattern; 20 inches by 30 inches. That set of figures appears nowhere on this list! So I'm not going to fuss about the size of the poncho no 2 pieces.

Thursday 3rd October

Illustrative Journaling.

What's that?

It just seems to be a polysyllabic way of saying that you draw pictures in your diary/journal as well as writing. 

I do have a daily page of 'what happened', in a page-a-day diary that I've been keeping almost without fail since 2014. There's no room for drawings in there. But with illustrative journaling  

a) you don't need to fit it all on one page, but can use several if you want

b) you are not trying to record the whole day, just one or a couple of moments.

We have been given 7 prompts; normally one wouldn't bother with prompts but this is to help you get started.

Today's prompt is 'breakfast'

I've cropped out the bottom part of the picture and the writing. (You might just be able to deduce that there is also a blue saucer with the various pills I take at breakfast time - 2 grey, 2 yellow, 3 white, 2 blue, a calcium supplement and a new one, a huge reddish brown capsule.)

The new capsule is the reason I had a 'breakfast egg muffin' for breakfast . I usually just have a piece of toast!

However I need to have something more substantial with this one, nintedanib, to avoid a deeply unpleasant side effect. Without going into details, the hospital pharmacist advised me to get some imodium before I started on them...

So far I've been okay, but this is only day 3...

I don't understand why they are called 'muffins'.  They are basically crustless quiches made in a muffin tin.

The recipe I used was for 6; 6 eggs, half a cup of crumbled bacon, a third of a cup each of cooked, drained chopped spinach and grated cheese.

Beat the eggs (in a jug if it is big enough) and stir in the rest of the ingredients. 

Pour into well greased muffin tins (these silicon ones are perfect) and bake for 15-18 minutes at 170-180 C.

I used 4 eggs and adjusted the quantities. According to the website,  www.dinneratthezoo.com, you can store them for 3 or 4 days in the fridge, just reheat for about 30 seconds. 

Today's was the first trial; next time I will cook them for 15 minutes rather than 18, and use a milder cheese. However I've another 3 left from this batch, and eating them won't be a hardship!

Here's how I drew the scribble flowers; have a go! It's ridiculously simple;

Wednesday 2nd October

I've got a bit of a thing for Island Bakery shortbread biscuits. They are, in my opinion, the best in the shops. Sadly you don't get many biscuits inside the cute boxes, but that's good in one way, because it helps me ration my biscuit consumption. 

Inside the box the biscuits are stacked on their edges in a little cardboard tray. While we were away on holiday I discovered that the tray is in the shape of a little rowing boat, with pictures of seagulls, octopuses and fish around the side. The dinghy even had a name - 'Iona'. That made me wonder if all the little boats were the same, so I checked out the dinghy that carried a cargo of lemon shortbread;

I was enchanted to see that my biscuits had been brought to me in a little boat called 'Ulva'. The bakery must be calling all the little boats after the names of the Islands. 

The lemon biscuits are finished now; I'll let you know what I find with in next packet!

Underneath the biscuit boat you may have spotted this picture. 

I was watching a YouTube 'short' about 'dealing with stress by drawing scribble flowers'. I'm not sure that I need to mindfully deal with stress and anxiety at the moment, but I thought it was a remarkably easy way to produce a striking design. And so it was.

I'm using it as the front page of the Commonplace booklet I've been working on. In the process I have learned how to persuade it to print out as a booklet, and also how to make text go over a picture.

BB will be delivering this to my father tomorrow when he takes his shopping round. 

Tuesday 1st October

The first of a month is a good time for starting things; my goddaughter got married on the 1st of October (many years ago now). "Choose a date that's easy to remember, " said her mother wisely. 

We hadn't heard of this excellent advice, with the result we celebrated our wedding anniversaries on the wrong date for many years before I came across an old order of service. 

I'm embarking on creating a booklet that my father might enjoy; rather along the lines of an anthology, or maybe a Commonplace Book, or perhaps a mixture of the two. 

Why? 

I remember my grandmother saying (at the ripe old age of 86) that one of the irritating things about being old was that by the time she reached the end of an article in The New Scientist magazine she had list the thread and couldn't remember the beginning. 

Now my father, in his 95th year, is complaining of much the same thing, so that reading books with a plot, or articles in his magazines, is becoming too frustrating. 

"Perhaps you enjoy a book of bits and pieces?"

"Maybe", was the cautious response. So here goes...

I collected about 8 A4 sides of material, using my own Commonplace books and also Alec Guinness' book which I had bought recently.

I included a page from my old Commonplace book from October 2023. I couldn't resist adding a comment in purple!

I thought I'd chosen a nice big font, but after learning how to print it to be folded into an A5 booklet I realised I needed a font size of about 22! 

I've got a fairly promising version printed off; with the larger font it is now 18 sides of A4. That's not too bad, just 9 double-sided pieces of paper. I won't be printing many copies - the corrected draft and a final version for my father. Hopefully he'll have his copy on Thursday when BB takes his shopping round.

Now for that editing and proof reading. Not my strong points as long term readers of this blog may have noticed...