The only clock I can see from where I sit eating my breakfast and catching up on the news, thinking through the day ahead, etc, hadn't been changed yet - it's the one high up on a shelf.
So when I saw it said 10 am I decided it was time for the second coffee of the morning. BB raised an eyebrow and commented it was a bit early, but I pointed out it was already 10, so he obliged. Of course, it was only 9 am. That clock has now been altered!
(I wish I could raise just one eyebrow.)
So I have paid a humungous invoice for the no-longer-leaking roof, drawn and written the 20-minute journal above, read through blogs, skimmed the news, assisted in the eviction of a monstrous spider from the kitchen sink, made the plasterer a cup of tea, and quite soon I will be in need of a little lie down in a darkened room...
.....
Flash mob in a school cafeteria - how I wish something like this had happened when I was at University, but I don't think flash mobs were even thought of then.
Violin soloist having an E string crisis at the Royal Albert Hall (I think you'd need to be super-caffeinated to attempt this concerto)
Just one clock (that I know of) left to change... it's on a high shelf so I'll get BB to reach it down.
I woke up at 5am according to the clock by my bed which had altered itself already. Of course that was 6am if the clocks hadn't changed, so not that unreasonable really. I managed to roll over and go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
When I woke again, it was bright and sunny, clear blue skies. Such a contrast to the last couple of mornings. It's funny how the old hymns from childhood church going and old-fashioned school assemblies stick; this is what came into my mind;
We never sang songs like 'When a knight won his spurs' or 'Kum by ah' or 'One more step along the road I go' or 'He's got the whole world in his hands'. Nope. We stuck to The English Hymnal or Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Anyway, while I standing looking out of the bedroom window. humming the tune and trying to remember the words, a blue tit came tapping at the corner of the windowsill, presumably hunting for spiders and insects.
What a great start to the day. I hope your days all go well this week.
Now, how should I cook this? I ordered an autumn squash on my last grocery delivery and this is what I got.
What kind of squash is it? Does one eat the rind?
What kind of squash is it? Does one eat the rind? It's quite small; I've put it on a saucer to give an idea of size.
I took a couple of little pots of apple sauce out of the freezer for my next couple of breakfasts, but on closer inspection they were labelled 'dahl'... not something I wanted to eat for breakfast. Although I'm thinking of ringing the changes by trying 'breakfasts of the world'; I know that in other countries people have soups and rice and noodles and cheese and cold meat....
But not today.
So supper was going to be dahl made into soup. soup. The original recipe for dahl incorporated squash, but I'm holding back on that little orange squash for now. Instead I sauted a little chopped onion, and some celeriac and carrot cut into little cubes before adding the dahl and some water.
Then I discovered we had run out of bread for toast! But there was a solitary cold sausage and two sad falafels... quite soon I appeared to have concocted a fairly substantial bowl of sort of stew.
....
I suddenly remembered my 'Year of Wonder' book, by Clemency Burton-Hill. She chooses a piece of music for every day of the year, some well known, others not.
Today's choice is a song, composed by Maria Malibran (1808 - 1836), 'one of the most celebrated divas of her day'. She was very talented, not only as a singer but as a composer and wrote around 40 songs before she died in a horseriding accident at the age of 28.
'Rataplan' (drumming sound), sung by Cecelia Bertoli.
It rained lasted night, all night, judging by the water along the sides of the road. It might have been windy too, but we both slept through until about 6.30, our usual waking-up time, when something toppled outside. It was probably a wheelie bin - they get put out on Thursday night as the lorry comes round early on Fridays.
As soon as it was light, we went out to inspect the extension; the builder and plasterer also came round. The extension was completely dry - hooray!
They both disappeared for the morning, but the plasrerer came back after lunch and worked non-stop all afternoon. I suppose he'll be back on Monday - we seem to be back on track.
I think storm Austen wasn't too bad round here... I hope they restore power quickly in the West Country, and that ElizabethD (Small Moments) is all right in Cornwall.
The news has been full of a security issue with a programming language called PHP. As far as I can find out, Blogger doesn't use PHP, but WordPress does.
I've been going through the blogs I follow to check which are Blogger sites and which are WordPress, and what other blogs are using. For the moment I'm sticking to just Blogger sites... until I've found out more about the others. So I shall have to hold off visiting some favourite sites for a little while.
It was Delivery Day today; a friend's garage is full to bursting with our new kitchen and our induction hob arrived. Now all we need is for plastering and painting to happen before the kitchen fitter starts in a couple of weeks.
We're rather hoping for a decent amount of rain tonight, not for the garden or filling reservoirs etc, although that's good too. No, we want the extension to have a really good test to make sure there are no leaks.
We had a bit of a moment when we discovered what we thought was a leak... it looked as though we might be embarking on a bit of a 'it's not us, it must be the builders' or 'it's not us, it's the hup! installers ' debate, which would have been tiresome to say the least.
However the builder came round to drop of some bags of plaster, and inspected the ceiling and floor carefully. He said they both felt dry, so we're hoping it's a false alarm.
The weather looks to be very rainy, but not particularly windy tonight and tomorrow. I reckon it could be windy nearer the coast.
Yesterday was a bit tough; we've been wrestling with a dilemma regarding whether I should take yet another med, with yet another set of side effects.... and I could feel myself beginning to flip from sane and sensible to... not sane and not sensible.
Deep breath.
'I need a ritual ' I decided (not that I've ever had 'a ritual'!)
1 Acknowledge that I'm in a bit of a state. ✅️
2 Make a cup of tea in a lovely cup.✅️
3 Sit and draw... I drew a square and slowly filled filled it with circles and then filled it in with spaces. ✅️
It worked. I rang the cardiology clinic nurse specialist who advised me that I needn't plunge into starting the new med unless other symptoms got worse.
And breathe. And relax. And calm.
It's rare for me to suddenly overwhelm like this... maybe once every 15-20 years? At least I can recognise and deal with it now!
It's like going down a spiral staircase.
Central criminal court, Old Bailey- English Heritage postcard
The trick is to catch myself before I've gone more than a few steps... climbing back up is always harder than going down.
Other snippets
Another blogger, Kezzie, described a concert (several concerts!) she played in over the weekend. She is a talented flautist, and The Most Anazing primary music school teacher ever... I wish I wish I had been taught by her as a child.
She included a link to this song (did they have a digeridoo in the orchestra?). This a playlist on youtube and the song she linked is the first one. I love, love, love it and will listen to the rest in due course.
If she had written her blog yesterday then 'Deep into the earth I go' would have been just as calming.
With BB's agreement I'm writing him a to-do list for the little jobs I can't manage...
Unblock the small vacuum cleaner as I can't get it apart
Hoover the bedroom - everything is so dusty everywhere!
Hoover the rest of the house - I can manage the smaller vacuum cleaner but the dust is so fine it just blocks in minutes
Deal with the filters on the oxygen concentrator upstairs.
Take the kitchen scraps to the compost bin.
I find it infuriating that I can't manage these jobs, and feel a complete heel for having to ask him. They are tasks that take him maybe just a few minutes and take me maybe an hour with frequent stops to get my breath. Pooh! Stinkums! Bah!
But I can at least make him a cake for afterwards.
I cast on 33 stitches for the pesky knitted square which was defeating me last month. I WILL SUCCEED. (Is this interesting? Probably not)
Granny Marigold suggested I collect a couple of leaves from my Arnold Promise witch hazel and press them. I have done so and stuck one in my book. It was the last leaf left (say that ten times quickly if you can!)
