Wednesday 11th September

It's book club tonight.

I'll join with zoom, but there will likely be a few on zoom and several absent tonight. Covid is doing the rounds, which accounts for two of us, another two are unwell and one is away. By my reckoning that's nearly half the group! 

It's my turn to pick the book.

I offered four titles;

The first two are poetry, and I didn't really expect them to get many votes. I put them in because I was curious to see if anyone else I the group would be interested. Nope; zero votes!

I read 'A Single Thread' a year or so ago and loved it. The Tove Jansson is another re-read, from much longer ago. Tove Jansson may be better known for her Moominland books, which I don't know at all. This is not a children’s book, though. I think it's the story of a small girl and her family and her grandma living on a tiny island in Sweden, I think, for the Summer. I found it wonderful,  in the sense of having lots to wonder about...

The group seems to have chosen 'The Summer Book' and I am curious to see how they get on with it.

I've got both the poetry books and will dip in and out of them with pleasure.

Tuesday 10th September

I think I'm slowly whittling away at my to-do list. I've crossed off about 4 items, decided to ignore two for another day, added and completed one new item and added another 2 for tomorrow. 

Is that moving forwards? Or staying still? Or am I going backwards? It's quite hard to tell.

I've listened to an awful lot of fairly dreadful 'hold musak' but my doodles have pleased me. 

They are all quite small, no more than an inch or two high.

The one below is my favourite. 

Monday 9th September

I should have taken a picture of our new garden bench. I was left some money by my godfather who died at a venerable age last year. I've used it to buy a proper, solid wooden bench to go just outside our French windows. It catches the afternoon sun at this time of the year, and is sheltered from the wind which usually comes swooping round the side of the house. 

BB was assembling it in a brief sunny interlude in an otherwise grey and chilly day this afternoon,  while I was on a rather crazy zoom call, with my father, my brother, my uncle (supported by his gangster, my cousin) and her brother. If you can get your head round this. Basically,  my father and his children, and his brother with his children... did that help?

Sadly my uncle has lost most of his mental ability following a series of strokes, but enjoys seeing us all on the screen, recognises us and makes comments as we chat. It's also go for the two brothers to be able to keep in touch this way. They are both into their 90s and very fril these days. 

Today's zoom was enlivened by discovering the 'captions' button, where zoom attempts to autogenerate subtitles. This was almost helpful for my father who often struggles to hear, but can read easily. 

I say 'almost helpful', because zoom's subtitles were frequently some way off from what was actually said, so I spent a good deal of the time collapsed with giggles. Especially when my brother spoke a little French to demonstrate that it would translate it into English. It didn't...

Sunday 8th September

Sunrise 6.26 am - Sunset 7.30 pm

Moon; waxing crescent 

This was another day where going upstairs for an afternoon zzz was a very good idea.

So I packed my 'here and there' or 'upstairs downstairs ' bag, made a honey, lemon and ginger tea and off I went.

Once upstairs I settled myself for a peaceful and comfortable couple of hours with books, knitting and my thermos mug of tea.

Sitting up, looking at the flowers all over my duvet cover, this phrase came to kind;

'He makes me lie down in green pastures'

There are times when 'powering through' is the best way forward. There are others when a bit of a lie-down in a quiet place is the better way.

I'm glad I listened, and chose the quiet place.

Saturday 7th September

 Goodness me, yesterday's post was all typos! I've usually got one or two in a post, but I'm surprised anyone could get through that one. 

I'll get round to fixing them.

Eventually. 

Yesterday was rather a doldrum day. I took myself off to my bed in the afternoon, with a thermos of honey and ginger tea, a couple of biscuits,  my kindle and a book. There are times when going for a couple of hour's zzz is the only sensible thing to to.

Today's been rather more fun, if not productive. I think my only contribution has been another slow-cooker apple crumble, for tomorrow's lunch. BB has been here and there; fixing my father’s phone (doesn't always get it back into the holder properly so then it goes flat), searching for ring spanners (still awol) and general tidying and so forth.

This afternoon we went off to our favourite farm shop café to meet the 'children' and hand over birthday presents to daughter. It's a few days early, but close enough... it's fun being all together to celebrate. Wapses were a bit inclined to gatecrash our little tea party but we put my little pot of jam on a nearby empty table and persuaded them to go off and share that instead of bothering us.

Tomorrow's job is going to have to be sorting out the other half of 'my' two seater settee;

Once again the collection of pens, pencils, sewing stuff in tins, books, papers knitting basket and everything else has got out of hand.

Ah well. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.

Meanwhile there is lovely Mozart on tonight's Prom and that is far more important. 

Friday 6th September

 And what happened to Thursday? 

It can often be a bit tricky remembering to post on Thursday evenings. I have a regular church zoom that night, and if I've forgotten to post something before 8pm it's almost certain I won't be up to writing a post at at gone 9.30.

Ah well. A day off from all my trivia...

I managed to get a good chunk of Poncho No 2 knitted this morning. 

This is the second piece - the back, or the front, depending on which way I put it on. Although, when assembled, it goes diagonally, so the front is also the right shoulder, and the back is also the left shoulder, .or the other way round. It just depends on how it ends up. Anyway, it's got to be about 30 inches long, so at 1.5 inches per day it's going to take - oh, I'm not going to bother to work out how many days. 

(I'm beginning to sound like on of those 'if a man and a half digs a hole and a hole and a half in a day and a half how long will it take to fill a bath and a half' sums)

The stitch markers show how far I've knitted each day, to encourage me along the road. 

I bought THREE copies of 'I Saw Esau'; one to keep and two as presents, all from World of Books. One copy is pristine, another copy has a few creases in the dust jacket but appears to be signed by Ione Opie and Maurice Sendak - that's a bit of luck, and the third, it a bit tattier and has list it's dust jacket.

I intend to add my own notes in pencil to this last copy. Like this verse; it's 'wrong'; it should be 

At the crack of dawn in the middle of the night

Two dead men got up to fight.

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other 

This is the version I learned as a child (from whom? where? when?) I think it is much better!

I like this next verse; it's new to me. But number 19 is a stray verse from 

'Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack

All dressed in black black black

With silver buttons buttons buttons

All down her back back back

She asked her mother etc

For fifty cents etc

To see the elephants etc

Sit on the fence etc

They flew so high etc

The touched the sky etc

And never came back etc

Till the fourth of July etc

I used to teach the song, and a very simple clapping game, and then pair up the children and get them to invent a more interesting clapping game. Then we'd sing the song together while the pairs demonstrated their game. A favourite (and easy!) lesson for me, the teaching assistant and the children!

Most of the verses a new to me, but there are a lot that are variations on the ones I knew.

I'll add some more, too, that are traditional from when I was growing up...

Did anyone else know

The common cormorant or shag lays eggs inside a paper bag.

Or

What a queer bird the frog are.

I shall be writing them in!