Saturday 13th June - listicles

 Listicle

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!

...

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!

...

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? 

Friday 12th June - harvest lunch

 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.

....

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.

Thursday 11th June - Reading all day!

 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...) 

.......

Or I could try a bit of this... (in my dreams!)

Electro Swing by ShuffleDance.pl Parov Stelar Booty Swing, Em Delacrem choreography

     

Wednesday10th May - midweek news

 There isn't any...

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! 

That's as far as we got with the list today. 

Monday 8th June - Relampago

Which means 'lightning'.

 This piece by Amy Ferguson won a composition competition run by 'the Pianist' magazine. They printed the score in the May issue and I made a point of getting hold of a copy as I love it.

Here's the first page; as I hoped it's not that difficult, but sounds very impressive. You have to remember to play it 2 octaves lower than written.

After I'd spent about half an hour on it, I discovered my fitness watch had added about 400 steps to the counter! That felt too much like cheating, even for me, so I took the watch off and added 400 real steps to balance things out.

I'm trying to achieve a total step count of 100,000 by then end of June. Not as a target, I don't like targets because I feel pressured by them. It's just a notion...

The first week is looking promising. 

......

This looks a promising new book: Phillipa Perry well known psychiatrist and agony aunt, and also wife of artist Grayson Perry, has written a cosy mystery.

It's out in hardback, audio and rather expensive  kindle editions at the moment, so I will have to practice patience and wait for the price to come down.

Meanwhile I shall carry on with 'Homecoming' by Kate Morton. It's all apparently disconnected strands and secrets at the moment; it had better start coming together soon or I fear I will abandon it!

Sunday 7th June - Psalm 23

 I'm thinking of the verse

'Peverse and foolish oft I strayed,

But yet in love he sought me,

And on his shoulder gently laid

And home rejoicing brought me.'

Today it came to mind when we saw this bizarre little scene through the window. 

It's not very clear, but you should be able to make out the geese which nested by the pond. For some reason they have arrived in our road along with three goslings, and a neighbour is trying to persuade them to walk to the corner (about three houses along on the right) and then up to the pond. That road has about 14 semi-detached bungalows. Then there's quite a busy road to cross.. It's going to be a tricky bit of shepherding.

Next-door's cat it watching with great interest, but is keeping a safe distance away.

...

I vividly remember my class being made to sing that verse on our own in school hymn practice as a punishment for being too chatty. We were so embarrassed. We were a perverse lot, and often strayed from the rules.