He stayed hidden in the weeds all the time we were out on the patio with BB's proper tape measure, my sewing yardstick/metre ruleyard, spare bricks for marking out edges and pavements chalk.
We were trying to fathom out how to arrange the steps down from what will be the new patio, without encroaching on the garden. Tricky, as the patio is only 2m deep from house to garden, and because of the slope of the ground the garden edge of the patio will be about 45 cm above ground level.
Chalking the lines makes everything so much easier! That pillar of bricks, 45cm tall, marks the height of the floor of the extension.
This sketch is just part of the patio area. We worked out that if we have a drop from the extension doors to the patio of around 10 cm - a shallow step - we can do three steps in an L-shape, each having a rise (or drop - depends which way you are going!) of around 12 or 13 cm.
Aki the cat put up with all this happening around him... perhaps he was muttering 'there is no cat' and hoping we hadn't seen him.
There's a rumour that work might start soon... I'm not holding my breath...
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It's been a bit tough this week but I have persuaded, pushed, cajoled and bribed myself to get 3,400 steps each day. 30 days times 3,400 steps comes to 102,000; just over what I'm aiming for...
I need to get started on the rest of today's steps...
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I gave started reading an old copy of a Young Adult book by Madelaine l'Engle called 'Prelude'. One of the characters, a woman who was a concert pianist but badly injured her shoulder in a terrible car crash was playing this Gigue in G by Bach, from his French Suites. There was a time when I could just about get through it, but never as well as Andras Schiff here!
This is one of the hymns used today at zoom church. The words are st Richard's. He was a 13th century bishop of Chichester, and is celebrated on 16th June, Sussex Day.
In journalism and blogging, a listicle is an article that is structured as a list, which is often fleshed out with additional text relating to each item. A typical listicle will have a title describing a specific number of items contained within, along with subsequent subheadings within the text for each entry. The word is a portmanteau of list and article.
(Here I started down a rabbit hole... there are novels written entirely in the form of letters, could one write one in the form of listicles?)
Back to the here and now, I reckon my blogs are nearly all listicles; a variety of topic headings and then a few sentences to expand further.
Like this paragraph!
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My father's flat isn't selling (yet, always add 'yet', to imply that any day now there will be a queue of people aged 55 or over and needing assistance to maintain their independence, all desperateto buy it). We've started to notice flyers from other estate agents appearing on the doormat when we go to check. They make me think of vultures.
I don't know any estate agents socially. It's rather hard to work out what they are doing for the fee... like spiders, spinning a Web and then just waiting to see if anything turns up...
I'm pretty certain that none of these companies are my friends!
The whole 'how can we sell the flat' issue nakes me want to hide... like Archimedes the owl meeting Wart, the boy who will become King Arthur in T H White's 'The Once and Future King'
I shut my eyes and say 'There is no flat'. Of course that doesn't work, and sadly neither does 'There is no me'. Life just isn't the same as fiction!
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Eating noodles is always a messy business. We gad noodles with teriyaki salmon and various bits of vegetable; the last of the broccoli, the remains of the asparagus, the dregs of the packet of frozen green beans, a few rather dessicated spring onions... tasted a lot better than I've made it sound! We sat opposite each other forking up noodles and slurping the straggly ends, or chomping them off with our teeth. Not a meal for invited guests!
It reminded me of this passage in Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell, written in 1850, about how their rigidly correct ladies ate their oranges;
Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where; sucking (only I think she used some more recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges.
Maybe we should have taken our dishes to eat our noodles in separate rooms?
This looks like being my vegetable harvest for 2026. Because of the impeding house extension work I haven't sewn, planted, or grown anything this year apart from three stunted broad bean plants.
Yesterday I noticed a few pods had filled out. I picked them this morning and we had them at lunchtime. Delicious!
There won't be any more produce until the apples are ripe.
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Knitting the squares is a very pleasant way of filling in a few minutes here and there in the day. I've got a wooden knitting bowl which is perfect for a couple of small balls of wool and my needles
I've photographed it with the current square wrong side up in order not to give away the pattern, and I've added a few extra balls of wool for further camouflage.
The square I've chosen has an easy repeated pattern over a couple of rows so it is really simple to work out what comes next when I pick it up to add some rows.
I've also cracked continental combination purl knitting, a game changer for me.
Somewhere else I read that this method twists the stitches - true - and the work around if you want to knit these stitches in the next row is to knit through the back of the stitch - yes! Easy peasy too.
I think I must have spent nearly the whole day reading Kate Morton's 'Homecoming'. I had to pause a couple of times; a piano lesson to teach in the morning, a long detailed telephone conversation with our architect about the extension, and making supper. (BB cooked lunch; we had steak, his speciality, yum yum very yum yum!).
I also had to pause and brace myself a few times; there were moments when characters did things that were so breathtakingly awful that I needed time to think about what I had read before I could continue, and instances characters who where pillars of rectitude were concealing such terrible wrongs - but one could understand why, what had tipped them over the edge.
Finally, I needed to keep reading in great chunks as the book switches between 1959, 1979, 1989 and 1999, and even though the chapters and context were clear in the chapter headings it was still a bit of a jolt to time travel back and forth.
It's a meatier read than I was expecting, and although I had several ideas as to what the plot twists might be, I was still caught by surprise by the several revelations.
It's set in Australia, and I realise I have no idea of where the cities and provinces are. I should think my ignorance is not unusual for British people, judging by the woeful answers whenever Australia is the continent for the 'where is Kazakhstan' game comes up on 'Richard Osman's House of Games', where you have to mark where various cities and landmarks are in answer to the questions.
Maybe tomorrow something will get done!
Meanwhile it is nearly bedtime and my step count is a measly 1700 - I'll get a couple of hundred in before I go to bed, and will try and make them up over the next three days (or I could just play Relampago a few times on the piano...)
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Or I could try a bit of this... (in my dreams!)
Electro Swing by ShuffleDance.pl Parov Stelar Booty Swing, Em Delacrem choreography
I knit, I write up my diary, I add a few bits to the ever-growing pile to go to the charity shop, I cook lunch, I read, I might tackle a housework chore (or I might not)...
Wednesday and Thursday are a piano lesson days, so I taught a piano lesson.
I played suduko,
and soon it will be bed time.
I'm happy enough with this... slow steady days are a blessing.
The New List; BB and I are compiling a list of places to visit, things to do, in the area. His 70th birthday, some years ago, was massively overshadowed by othe family events, and mine is later this year. So we're thinking of slightly celebrating both of them. At the moment we're concentrating on places within an hour or so of where we live;
Pallant House gallery in Chichester
Bignor Roman Villa
Wings Aviation Museum
Tangmere Aviation Museum
a Little Local Library box in Hove just because it is there
I'd love to set up a little free library outside our house!
