Friday 1st November - A close shave

If I hadn't just clicked on feedly for a quick look before bedtime,
and if boggyb's post about NatBloPoMo hadn't popped into view as the first thing I saw
then I would have missed day 1!!!

Now all I have to do is post about something....

Here we go...

I was in London today with my favourite
companion; we were in the King's Road and so had a wander around the Saatchi Gallery exhibition entitled "Paper".

Some of the items on display are wonderful. Others are intriguing. many are - hm. Indescribable?

I'll probably have more to say about them another time. This time we followed our noses down to the basement level to look at the sump oil. http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/richard_wilson.htm

It's a curiously enigmatic and fascinating installation; the base of the room has been flooded with used sump oil (stinky) which makes a perfectly reflective surface. It's a bit hard to work out from the photographs - I suggest you go and see it for your self. Admission is free.

Monday 28th October - Listening Skills

After the conversation I have just had/failed to have with The Man I Love, I think these would make a suitable purchase;

Let me make it clear - it was MY ears that were doing the in-and-out-ing this time.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/96474390/in-one-ear-out-the-other-resin



So if no-one buys them for me, I might get them anyway. And wear them with great pleasure. it is always nice to find something that fits so well.

Monday 28th October - After the storm - rainbows and a godwit

Number One Son and I went out in search of weather after the Big Storm. We ended up at Pulborough Brooks, the RSPB place.

 

 

There definitely had been a storm; when I woke up, just before dawn, the wind was making busy and enthusiastic blustering noises round about. I looked out of the window and could make out the oak tree at the bottom of the garden pretending to be a Van Gogh painting - all swirly and twirly in the half-light.

 

By lunchtime, it seemed like a normal, slightly windy day. The sun was out, the sky was blue...    

 

And the clouds were big and determined. They meant business, as we were to discover.

Look again at the picture above; everywhere we went, we saw rainbows. After admiring that rainbow, we carried on round and went into one of the hides. Within a short time the sky turned properly black overhead and we were incarcerated for about ten minutes by real, steely grey rain thundering down relentlessly.

When it stopped, two of the volunteers laden with Serious Telescopes appeared. I was delighted to hear them exclaiming over a godwit that they could just make out at the far side of the water-logged field in front of us. How perfect. A godwit. (Not sure if it was lesser or greater or spotted or black-backed - not sure if I care, actually). They radioed their find in to "Base" who promised to report and log it. They even let us look through their telescope, so I, too, have seen a godwit.

It was getting on in the day so we made our way back up. At one point it was raining and sunny at the same time, with rainbows around every corner, appearing in the gaps between trees, brightening and fading, and brightening again.

Number One Son managed to track down a geocache that we failed to find last time we were here. It was hidden in a snail shell, and the shell hidden in the sort of place that snails like to hide in. I'm not sure if you can make out the tiny scroll tucked inside the shell for recording your D and the date that you found it. Luckily I keep a pair of tweezers in the car (!) so we were able to extract it.

Then he replaced the shell, and we went home to make cakes.

Yoghurt cake with apple, which was delicious.
A new version of Farmhouse Cake from www.recipesfromacornishkitchen.blogspot.com, made with whisky and water instead of milk, twice as much dried fruit, a peeled and chopped apple, and half and half muscovado and soft brown sugar, and mixed spice and nutmeg which is apparently still too warm to try properly. Verdict will be available tomorrow.
A Good Day.

Sunday 27th October - Corrections

A page from the Hindu calendar 1871–1872.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar

A reader (he knows who he is!!!) has noticed that sometimes, maybe occasionally, perhaps even frequently, the day-date-month part of the heading of my posts can be - misleading, inaccurate, or, to put it plainly, wrong.

Calendar of the Qahal, 5591 (1831)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar

Well, now that I am a grown-up, I don't like doing corrections.

Not since I used to have to write out my spelling corrections six times, neatly, at the end of the dictation tests at primary school.

All I will say is that the DAY of the post refers to the DAY. And the MONTH of the post refers to the MONTH. Usually. And sometimes the Date is right too.



A calendar from the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar

And sometimes not.

I've double-checked - today looks ok at the moment.



Richard of Wallingford pointing to a clock, his gift to St Albans Abbey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock

Oh, by the way, have you remembered to put your clocks back? We did.

Saturday 26th October - Cute Little Ducklings

 

Years and years and years ago, my brother gave my children (when they were tiddly little toddlers) a battery operated toy which was a sort of penguin helter-skelter. It was SO popular, and SO annoying, that in the end we would switch it on for just a few minutes as a last treat before bed-time.

An escalator would allow the 3 penguins to travel to the top of the slide, whereupon they would slide all the way down to the bottom of the escalator, and then travel to the top of the slide, whereupon they would slide all the way down to the bottom of the escalator, and then - you get the idea?

The annoying bit was the continuous high-pitched squeaking sound that went on while all this sliding and escalating was happening. My brother had bought one for himself (why? he was quite grown up, - at least in years) and almost immediately removed the squeaking-noise-making-bit. I'm not surprised.



Oh my goodness gracious me! You can still get it! Be very grateful that you can't hear it. But, if you want to torture your ears, (and your eyes, but the video operator will calm down fairly soon )  click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydDuM1RsZFQ

Now, I know this post is titled "Cute Little Ducklings", and here they are, and that's what made me think of the penguins.  (Video via http://johnthelutheran.tumblr.com/)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IjWAsT2IffI

Friday 26th October - What a day!

Capuchin Monkey
borrowed from my music site
www.themusicjuingle.co.uk
drawn by "the artist" and
included by permission (from me)

When you are busy, and when the school term is eight weeks (less one day) long (and I know I have chuntered about this already), and when you have been teaching from 9:45am to 6pm, with twenty minutes for lunch, and a half an hour break between school teaching and piano teaching at home, and when the last four lessons at the school were three beginner recorder classes and one - let's call them the "slowly improving recorder class"








when you reach the end of the teaching part of the day,

Keyboard Snake, also borrowed from my music site www.themusicjungle.co.uk
drawn by "the artist" and included by permission (from me)

and you cook and eat supper (thank heavens for that pulled pot-roast-lamb that I put into the freezer a week or so ago),

and watch some television (Inspector Frost and the Gruesome Granny - suitably "easy-watching")

when you go to bed, and your eyes shut before you can finish the Sudoku (which you are doing because you've left your book downstairs and your Kindle has gone flat so in spite of having upwards of 200 books in the bedroom you can't find anything to read)

then next day you can hardly remember what happened until you start to blog about it!

But that was all yesterday, and today we've spent the whole day in Arundel, looking at this and that and the other. Which is partly why yesterday had disappeared under the overlay of what we did today.

It does seem a bit wasteful, to have your days so packed full that in the end you can barely remember what happened yesterday, let alone last week. That is the advantage of keeping a diary - at least you spend some time reflecting on the events of the day, revisiting the good parts, mulling things over, before they vanish from your mind.