Saturday 30th November - Thank heavens for that

Calendar page for November with a miniature of a nobleman returning from a hunt, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/11/a-calendar-page-for-november-2013.html#sthash.SSWQvaxE.dpuf

The LAST DAY of NOVEMBER

so don't expect any more DAILY posts for another year!

It's been a bit of a slog this time round with quite a few fails.

There have been phases in my life when I have kept a written diary - sometimes for as long as a couple of months. In the end, though, life, and time, and events overtake me, and the daily duty gets set aside in favour of more important things, like sleep.


Calendar page for November with a bas-de-page scene of men on a hunt, from the Golf Book (Book of Hours, Use of Rome), - See more at: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/11/a-calendar-page-for-november-2013.html#sthash.SSWQvaxE.dpuf

These diaries of mine are in various notebooks and journals scattered all over the house. I came across an old one recently - probably dating back to 2005-ish - I can't remember the details exactly. The thing is, so much happens, so much goes on, that within even just a couple of days I will have forgotten most of what happened last week or yesterday, or even this morning.

I have spent an intense day, today, working with a colleague teaching 30 children aged 8 to 11 years improvisation and composition skills. It's been a good time, and the children managed really well, especially considering that some of the younger ones had only been learning their instrument since September. I got home an hour and a half ago, sat and had a coffee and a biscuit, and already today is a distant memory, shoved to the back of the head as I am down for teaching Sunday School tomorrow and playing the organ at the early service and we still haven't done the weekly shopping and I must remember to fill the car with petrol and put a load in the washing machine and iron three shirts and pay my Barclaycard bill and do a zillion and one things before bedtime tonight.........

The good thing about keeping a diary, I mean the journal sort, not the appointment sort, is that you get a chance to go through the events of the day and remember what happened and take stock. The bad thing is when it becomes some kind of obsessive duty that takes over your life and limits your freedom to career through the day. You choose.

Friday 29th November - early post today

Thought I'd best get today's post up early as I'm bound to forget, and at the moment I don't know if I'm going to a Christmas "do" this evening 'cos I can't remember the date of it.

Woke up early at five am - so did BestB. Can't blame the neighbour going on early shift as he didn't leave until half-past.

So we just got up early and started the day... it's only 8am-ish and I am three tasks done on the to-do-list and ready to go back to bed.

Duck!!!! Incoming!!!!

St Benedict says idleness is a Bad Thing and you should keep busy. Hah!

Life. Just random at the moment.

Tues 26th Wed 27th Thurs 28th November - Birthdaydaydayday

It's been my birthday - in fact it's been my birthday since the first present arrived, neatly positioned beside the planter on the front doorstep, at the end of last week. (Note to self - write thankyou note). I didn't open it until the real birthday.

Unlike the presents I receive from my Favourite Daughter on Sunday afternoon - it seemed a shame not to open them while she was there, so I did.   Open them early, that it.   fab - a book from my wish list, (Note to self - update relevant page on blog) and other goodies. We also had cake.

Cards and flowers arrived on Monday

and more presents (books and chocolates and flowers and other treasures) and cards on Tuesday from Best B and Number One Son and friends, (note to self - update the pages on my blog again).

Yet more presents from my parents and my Uncle and Aunt over from the Netherlands when we took a Chinese meal round to share with them on Wednesday. (chocolates, baklava, an amazing oil lamp, and, oh wow, a battery operated bubble-blowing gun. (I saw these at Niagara Falls and was very, very taken by them! The children had them, and the bubbles floated past, lit up by the floodlights trained on the falls. I don't have any pictures of the bubbles, but it's an excuse to post memories of the Canada trip from this Summer...)

It's Thursday, and it's STILL my birthday! A card from someone at work, and tonight there was cake, and a candle, and cream!

 

So, a lot going on these last few days, and not much time for posting.

 

 

Monday 25th November - First, make a plan

It's a fairly busy week coming up, with various extra tasks to be remembered and completed by various different deadlines.

I need to make this week's To-Do list as soon as possible.

Now, where is my Special To-Do pad?

Somewhere under this lot.

So that's the first task sorted then. Tidy the table.

Ugh. I think I'll go and have a bath first. And maybe read my book for a bit. And have another cup of coffee. Hang on, I've already forgotten about that cake I put in the oven. Gotta go.

Sunday 24th November - A lively morning

On three occasions in the past couple of months I have woken up feeling -

(to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands")

I'm alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic,
I'm alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic,
I'm alive, awake, alert,
I'm alert, awake, alive,
I'm alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.

There are actions; on the words

alive, pat knees once
awake, touch shoulders with both hands
alert, touch head with both hands
enthusiastic, clap on thu, stamp on sias, click fingers on tic
(or is it click on sias and stamp on tic? Does it matter?)

The point being that on these memorable mornings I have been feeling the way, the way that, - well, the way I used to feel most of the time. back then. In long-gone days of yore.

It could be the result of the various drug treatments over this past year (that have been making me feel tired, but have also improved my health), or maybe it's just a sense of emerging from a long tough year.

On the previous lively mornings, the effect wore off quite quickly, but today I felt bright and breezy and up for it and ready for action for most of the day.

Just as well - I left home in time to perform my turn on the church transport rota, collecting and looking after a resident of a local home. As I turned in, I met someone else from church coming out, with that person already loaded into the car. I followed them all the way back to church, where I discovered that I had entirely forgotten that I was on the rota as organist for the early service (luckily someone in the congregation was able to stand, or rather, sit, in for me). And, because someone else was now looking after the resident from the home, I hadn't needed to swap myself off the prayer rota that day. So, instead of being treble booked for the services, I had nothing to do except sit and be a member of the congregation. Did you get all that? No matter.

Anyway, that's probably why this morning's liveliness lasted so long!

Saturday 23rd November - that's your lot for now

just in case I forget to post during the rest of November, you can re-read one of today's bonus posts.

there's a clue to The Secret Craft Project in one of them.

Saturday 23rd November - Busy Day

Today's busy-ness started with the timely delivery of some techy stuff for our PC. I've got a vague understanding of the outlying basic broad principles of what was delivered and what it is for but I have no intention of trying to explain it to you.

Anyway, the point is that the parcel arrived in time for him to set it in motion before we went to visit my parents for morning coffee and strategic planning.

We did so much planning that coffee fell right off the agenda, what with the wide-ranging conversations, and a little interlude of taking the advantage of extra people being around for my mother to get some time in the standing frame that they have acquired;

who would have thought that we would ever have reached this point...

This time last year we were rejoicing that we had managed to spoon some rhubarb yoghurt into my mother without her choking on it. Back then, all she could do was lie, helpless, on the bed, and call for two nurses if she wanted to change her position from sitting to lying.

Afterwards, BestBeloved and I went and found some lunch, and bought some small Christmas presents, and bought some bits and pieces for my parents, and took them round to the flat, and came home, and unloaded the car, and BB prodded the computer which is still doing its important thingy with the new thingies, and had A Proper Cup of Tea (as in the earlier post).

Supper will be sandwiches (and probably more cake) and then it will be bedtime. I shall put my knitted earphones on, and fall asleep to the dulcet sound of Cantabile - The London Quartet - singing Lullabyes and Goodbyes; my current favourite track is Hushabye Mountain (from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

I wanted to put a link to the Amazon sample track but they have changed their website and I can't find how to get at the samples any more. Sorry.

  

Saturday 23rd November - Thanks, Norton

A small flag appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of my laptop screen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Norton has tuned your PC"

         Thanks, that's great.

















Could you do the piano, the guitar, the ukulele and the cello for me as well?

 

pictures all from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning





Saturday 23rd November - Proper Cup of Tea

In honour of a Good Day's Work I have made a Proper Cup of Tea.

Real Tea Leaves
in a Real Tea Pot
with Cups and Saucers
and Fruit Cake on a Plate
and a Tea Strainer
and a Milk Jug.

Like So.

 

There are three pieces of cake because of weight watching. My new method is to eat only half of what Best Beloved has. So if he has two slices of cake, I can have one. It seems to be working, sort of.

 

I nearly ruined the whole effect by filling the milk jug with water, but luckily I spotted the mistake in time.

 

Ahhh. Luverly.

Friday 22nd November - 5 stages of change

Oh HeAVENS tO bETtSY. iT IS SO infuriating when I go to the trouble of writing a post and then don't click on PUBLISH. And what's up with capslock? Oh ok I see. Fixed. false Alarm (Saturday 23rd November)  

An unexpectedly serious post today ...



And one of the bloggers I follow added "and whisky" to this cartoon!

If you have anything to do with Change Management in your working life, then you will be familiar with the following summary of the 5 phases that people faced with CHANGE go through;

1. Shock (Denial)

2. Emotion (Anger)

3. Bargaining (If I do this then I achieve that - a kind of personal horse-trading)

4. Grief at loss (It isn't fair)

5. Acceptance (in two parts; Intellectual AND Emotional)

By Change, I don't mean change that you have chosen - like an exciting job opportunity abroad, or new career direction, or having a baby. I mean Change that is forced upon you, without your consent, maybe even without any kind of warning.

These stages can be written in different ways, but that's what they basically boil down to. By change, I mean anything from a change in working practices (I've been through that), to being made redundant (I've been through that too) or the effects of serious illness (I face up to this every day).

And I can honestly say that the above 5 stages broadly represent what everyone facing Change has to deal with. All our family - the Offsprings, and Best Beloved - have had personal experience of Change, ranging from minor to catastrophic. Best Beloved's work over the past twenty years has been, in one way and another, one of Managing Change, and leading all kinds of people, some Very Senior, and some Very Junior, through these stages.  

I think that people these days have a greater understanding of the issues surrounding "life-changing events" than maybe was possible in the old traditional "stiff upper lip" era. These days, one can express one's feelings without being told to "Pull yourself together" and "Exercise Self-Control". The advantage is that one can progress through these stages with  more awareness of what is happening to yourself.

Most people get caught in one or other of these stages for a period of months, even years. Some people manage to recognise what is going on, and move through more quickly - it's still a struggle. There is no panacea, no magic pill, to get you through the process of accepting the consequences, emotional and intellectual, of The Change.

Arriving at "Acceptance" isn't the same as "giving up", or "giving in". It means arriving at the stage where you are able to work with what you have, rather than constantly fighting to restore the un-restorable.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine



Living and moving and working through Change is exhausting. It isn't a fun or nice or welcome experience. It is debilitating. It isn't easy. But it is a consequence of being alive, of being human, of having feelings.

The past year, living through the aftershocks of my mother's stroke have been like a copy-book exercise in Change Management for every member of the family.

Meanwhile, could you just pour me another glass of wine? (I don't care for whisky).

Wednesday 20th November - Standing start

Another post that somehow stayed as a draft - or got turned back into a draft, or now appears as a draft anyway (It's now Saturday 23rd November)

So, this morning, I'm pottering on the computer after breakfast before getting dressed. Looking at this, printing that, just investigating a few ideas for music lessons...

Then I amble into the kitchen and put the final few bits and pieces into my lunchbox, and fiddle around trying to close it without flat-packing the banana...

And I hear the alarm sound from my phone and I think HOLY MOSES - BLOOD TEST

Flip! That was a fifteen minute pop-up alarm!



I made it to the hospital, fully dressed, just in time, without speeding. The ice on the car had melted, thanks to the weather changing from freezing cold to just rain. All the traffic lights were green. I was able to park in one of the free 20 minutes "drop-off, pick-up" bay. The only hold up was caused by a couple of people ambling along the corridor to their appointment in front of me.

My word - it took no time at all to get the little test-tubes filled, the way my heart was pumping.

So then I drove steadily home to brush my hair, brush my teeth, and finish getting ready for work.

Oh, by the way, "yesterday's" post was another "here's one I prepared earlier" one. After I took the pictures, I moved the Christmas Cactus to another room, where a guest was staying for a few days, just to brighten things up. The flowers promptly died, the buds shrivelled and fell off, and I just have the basic green cactus back on the kitchen windowsill. I guess I'll have to wait for next year to see if it will flower again.

Tuesday 19th November - Christmas Cactus

This little pot plant is bringing me a lot of pleasure. It found its way into my shopping trolley a few weeks ago, looking rather tatty.

Now, the most enormous and unexpected flowers keep emerging, and turn into the most complicated shape.

They start off as tiny pink bobbles on the end of the leaves

which steadily  inflate into large flame shapes,

which undo the petals into this kind of exotic origami, shaded white to pink, with delicate white stamens at the top. Is it a bird, or a dancer, or some fantasy faerie?

Whatever it is, it is £5 well spent. It is on the kitchen windowsill to brighten up chores like washing up.

Monday 18th November - Move away from that cake!

Every so often I find that I am having an "eating" day.

I weighed myself this morning; I do so most days, the reason being that although I am on low-dose steroids, I am well aware that they can make you put on weight. I've seen the truly awesomely awful consequences of this in the hospital clinics. I gather that it's not the steroids themselves that make you get fat, it's the effect they have on your appetite.

So, today, I eyed up the scales and thought uh-oh, no cake today. Stop the slide before it starts.

Which went very well - no cake, biscuits or croissant when I had coffee with my father. No extra nibbles at lunchtime.

But then it got to tea time - and in short order I munched both a packet of mixed nuts and a portion of little oat-cakes with onion marmalade from last week's grazebox. It was only the arrival of a series of piano pupils that stopped me from making porridge and toast... that was a near thing indeed.

When a plate of cake arrived in front of my nose later this evening, I ate it all up without a second thought. Deeelicious.

I can only hope that all the activity this morning (ironing, cleaning the bathroom and loo, two loads through the washing machine, shopping, putting petrol in the car, collecting forms from the doctor, picking up a prescription, going to the bank), and then teaching a determined and vigorous djembe lesson to forty - let's call them "lively" - children this afternoon will have gone some way to using up these calories.

There's still some cake left in the tin, and this week's grazebox  dropped through the letterbox this morning with all these lovely goodies inside - oh dear...

Sunday 17th November - Gardening

I'm not a great one for doing the garden.

Back in 1984, when I walked the length of this road in order to view the house that was to become our home, I noticed that the majority of people clearly belonged to the "manicure and trim with nail scissors" school of gardening, at least where their front gardens were concerned. I almost turned back - it is a very long road - but I had already walked for about half an hour to get here, so I kept going.

The front garden of this house was not as neat as the neighbours - let's say "kitchen scissors" standard. We bought it anyway.

We still have the same neighbours, and their gardens have evolved over the years, but are still well up to horticultural standards. I like to think that ours provides good contrast, and makes their look even better by comparison.

However, there are two shrubs that are tatty enough that even I am getting fed up with them. To encourage myself, I have taken before:

 
and after

pictures. Passers-by no longer have to dodge the outgrabing mome raths of the bush in the front garden. I was pleased to discover that neither bush was of the thorny-spiky-draw-blood-from-your-fingers variety. However I did end up leaving samples of my DNA on the nearby rose bushes.

Saturday 16th November - If you can't sleep...

from http://ragelol.tumblr.com/post/30258535371/i-get-distracted-more-easily-than-a-five-year-old

Saturday 16th November - Another project started!

All craft projects are now on hold;

the blanket made of knitted squares,

the quilt

 the Tunisian crochet blanket

 until the latest Top Secret Project, started today, is finished.

I'm saying no more to anyone about it, so don't ask. I'll let you know when it is completed. If it gets completed.

Saturday 16th November - The full moon through the trees

This evening, as the light faded and day became night, I watched the huge, pale moon, lightly veiled in wisps of clouds, bobbing and weaving between the bare branches of the trees.

We were in the car, driving home. Depending on the lie of the road, the moon sometimes appeared high above the trees, shining through the inky sky, sometimes low, barely above the hedgerow. Sometimes to the left, sometimes dead ahead.

It brought back sharp memories of this time last year. Most evenings, at about 7pm, as soon as I had finished teaching, we would leap into the car and rush the twenty miles to the hospital in order to snatch an hour with my mother. Then we would return to a ridiculously late meal, usually around 9pm, before falling into bed, to sleep before the alarm went at 6 am the next day. This was our routine until she was able to go back home in February this year.

A year ago, my mother wasn't able to eat or drink normally. All fluids and food had to be thickened to a kind of paste and fed to her using a spoon. She was very confused, in a lot of pain, confined to bed, unable to even sit up, and pretty much completely helpless.

What a contrast, between then and now. Today we spent a pleasant morning in the brisk Autumn sunshine pushing my mother around the town, looking at the market stalls and searching for a winter hat (we found a lovely soft cowl which does double duty as hat and scarf). Then we went to a local restaurant for lunch, before going back to the residential home where my mother is staying for a week's respite.


The same moon, the same inky-blue sky, the same bare-branched trees. A new year.

Friday 15th November - Made it to the end of another week.

My eyes are closing themselves, and it is only 8 pm. It's another of those evenings where Best Beloved and I are toughing it out until we can reasonably fall upstairs at about 9pm.
Hey! None of that "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" stuff; we will both be snoring like - can't think what we will be snoring like - snoring like whatever it is we will be snoring like - by ten minutes after lights out.

My mother has been staying at a local residential home this week, Sunday-to-Sunday, so that my father can have "respite" and time to sort out whatever got shoved into the rented garage and the Lock'n'Store when they moved at the beginning of October 2012, a couple of weeks before The Stroke changed all our lives. Boxes and boxes of family history papers are going to someone who wants them, and a Windsor chair suddenly appeared in our hallway one day (I did know it was coming - just hadn't worked out where we would put it).

It's not exactly "respite" for anyone, in one sense; my father may well be freed from the day-to-day confines of looking after my mother at home, but he has visited her several times, and been acutely concerned for her welfare the rest of the time. He's also been hard at work sorting out the stuff in said garage and said Storage Facility. Some of her friends have been to visit, and I've been round to visit  on Sunday evening and Monday and Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoon and Friday morning and will be going tomorrow on Saturday. Between us we've been keeping track of her laundry, collecting, washing, draping over radiators and in airing cupboards in order to get it returned to her promptly. My brother has been down for two nights to help with going through all the boxes and working out what to do with them.

Of course, for my mother, it's not a respite at all; it's coping with different staff, some lovely, some not, and a different regime (main meal at lunchtime, light snack at tea-time), and institution food (adequate, but not the same as home cooking) and generally not being where she wants to be. The main bright positives have been that this time she's had the electric wheelchair with her, giving her a little mobility, and also been able to go to the day care unit, where she goes twice a week normally, every day, rather than getting through the days upstairs among strangers or in her room.

It takes effort, and determination, on everyone's part to make this "respite care" work - none more brave than my mother. So I have drunk a glass - or two - to all of us tonight. Which is probably why my eyes are closing and it's (I'll just check the clock again) now only quarter past eight. Goodnight all!

Thursday 14th November - Thank heavens for the freezer

By the time I get to the tail end of the week, I'm definitely running out of steam.

Take a day like today: Music teaching full on between 9 and 2:30, quick bite to eat (as in the rest of lunch; I get to munch half a sandwich in a free ten minutes at about 12, and finish the rest after the last class lesson. Zip down the hill to visit my mother, who is currently spending a week in a local residential home so that my father can have a break, then whizz back home to start the evening's piano teaching.

Now it is half past six, and time to be thinking about supper.

I did actually chop an onion and some few sticks of celery and a couple of carrots, fry them for a bit, chuck in some braising steak, cider, passata, herbs, clove of garlic and seasoning and whack the whole lot in the oven (160 fan for two and a half hours), but that will take two and a half hours to cook. No good for tonight's meal, then. And getting that lot into the oven without slicing my fingers used the last joules of energy that I had left.

So, while I was doing that, Best Beloved was delving into the freezer to come up with a "here's one I made earlier". It turned out to be a variation on "sausage supper" made with chorizo sausage. It was a doddle to boil some pasta and microwave the contents of the plastic boxes. As I had a chopping board and knife out, I went the extra mile and chopped and fried a couple of mushrooms.

Meanwhile, the beef stew will be ready just as we go to bed - at 9:30ish, seriously, always assuming we are still awake enough to get up and go to bed - and will go into the freezer ready for another day.

Now, all that's left for me to do is hang up some laundry (on various racks over the bath etc - after all, it isn't going to dry outside at this time of night), type up the lesson reviews from today's lessons, and post this blog.

Toodle - oo!

Wednesday 13th November - It's that time of year

when I drive along roads bordered with glorious Autumn colours. I did stop for a few pictures, but not where I really wanted to, as that would have been problematic for other road-users.

 

On Wednesdays I drive along roads through St Leonard's Forest - after a couple of light early-morning frosts the leaves on the beech trees have finally started to turn. It's when the trees on both sides of the road meet in the middle, and the sun is shining, and the light streams through the golden-green-tawny archways that my heart sings.

Oh, to be in England when the leaves are on the turn...

Tuesday 12th November - It's that time of year

The time of year when;

due to the change in weather, people arrive for piano lessons in coats and then forget to take them with them when they go

I start leaving my books/planning/resources scattered across various schools here there and everywhere

Music Exam schedules re-arrange and derange my normal teaching schedules - daytime and in the evening

Christmas seems months away but will be here sooner than I think
(count the Tuesdays; 19th, 26th, 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th December)

Any spare slots in  my diary fill up with rehearsals for carol concerts and carol services, and a surprising number of staff Christmas parties...

Anyway - it's also suppertime. Toodle-oo.

You'd have been able to read this if I had actually POSTED it yesterday as well as writing it...

Monday 11th November - what happened to this post?

hey ho. It's Tuesday. This daily blogging lark isn't going as well as in previous years.

I was traipsing around town in the rain yesterday, having run out of time for the million-and-one- errands I was supposed to be doing. However I did have time for some of them; the ones which involved sitting down with a coffee and writing a couple of letters which could then be posted in the post-box across from the favourite café.

Did I mention the rain? The pavements were slick, and the metal drain-cover outside the café was slippery.

I can't actually recall the exact series of movements, as one, and then the other, and then both, feet seemed to suddenly disconnect from my body and go in weird directions sequentially and simultaneously. I hung onto my handbag, laptop, and what remained of my balance for dear life, determined not to hit the hard paving stones, while an interested audience stood by waiting to see how the adventure would end.

After about half an hour - or maybe 5 seconds, I found myself to be "at rest" - that is in terms of movement, not heart rate. I had slightly sprained my left foot, left hand and right elbow, although I don't think I actually hit anything (walls, drainpipes, bystanders).

So I smiled sweetly at the small crowd gathered around me, and wibbled into the café for a flat white and a croissant and a slight case of the shakes.

And prayers of thankfulness. It could have ended so differently.

Sunday 10th November - MCMXIV

Here's a post I prepared earlier; a poem I came across last week and saved for today.

At this very moment I am listening to/watching a programme on BBC 4 on the history of the requiem. WeE have reached Brahms; very appropriate.

MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Saturday 9th November - The Odd Day, and the cat

Apparently today is the last Odd Day for some time; 9/11/13

We are supposed to celebrate by doing things to do with "odd-ness" - tidying odds and ends, betting on an odds-against favourite, or whatever.

I was working, which is "odd" for a weekend - a "Music Enrichment Day" for six- and seven-year olds. So maybe that counts.

The next Odd Day will be on - oh, I can't remember when. You can work it out. Not for ages and ages anyway.

And the cat? Well, after I got home from a full-on day teaching music, I settled on the settee with a quilt. No, first I went and had an afternoon zzz. Then I brought the quilt downstairs and curled up in a veggie state in front of the TV.

The downstairs cat likes it best if she can snuggle up on some kind of blanket or throw in the middle of the settee between the two seats.

Like this;

Friday 8th November - Mugged by Music

I'm not going to have anything useful or interesting to say tonight. My brain is non-functional, my head is full of noise, my mind is concentrated out and totally out of focus. Why?

Today I have taught all day, from 9:45am through to 6:45pm. There have been a few short breaks; 15 minutes for lunch, 30 minutes for clearing admin and talking through issues arising from the lessons, and 30 minutes for travel home and make a cup of coffee.

9:45 through to 12:25 was exam practices, working with small groups of children, accompanying their music exam pieces and teaching them their aural tests. Oh, and it was "Wet Play" at lunchtime.

After lunch I taught the Recorder Ensemble - 20 children playing descant, treble and tenor recorders. We started working on "Silent Night" in readiness for the Carols-by-Candlelight concert early in December. It's a little way to go before it sounds beautiful - at the moment playing the right notes and  the right rhythms are the priorities.

Then a new samba group. Samba can bring out the worst (wild behaviour, egging each other on to be Very Silly) or the best (intent focus and concentration, listening and determination) in the children. This lot are looking, and therefore sounding, good already.

Finally four more recorder groups, including three young beginner groups crammed into a single hour, and I was grateful for a break!

Once I was home, I just had three more lessons to go; a talented young pianist working on Grieg's Notturno, (There are lots of recordings on youtube but this is a good one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpU-gnkIFRo).


Geirangerfjord, Møre og Romsdal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord

Then there was a Grade 5 theory student who was reeling with tiredness after a hard week, and a violin candidate with his exam coming up very soon.

Each lesson demands total concentration; listening, watching, analysing, managing, encouraging, nipping trouble in the bud, strength of personality to maintain control in various proportions depending on whether I am teaching one mature student, or thirty lively youngsters.





SO I was grateful for my husband offering to buy instant food for supper - zip, zap and ping - and preparing it, and serving it, and clearing it away. What a lovely man.

Thursday 7th November - Early to bed...

and early to rise

makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Hrrmph. I'm not healthy or wealthy, so all that leaves is Wise. Which I therefore must be. Very.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl
The Little Owl, 1506, by Albrecht Dürer

I've been falling asleep on the settee since 7pm this evening. But, on the whole, that was a bit too early for an early night. So we toughed it out until 9pm, and then I remembered that I had forgotten to post anything for today.  

So that Durer Owl picture is all you are getting from me today.


Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bugs bite

(how do you stop them? apart from mosquitoes I've never had any experience of bugs that bite in the night? There's a "TOO MUCH INFORMATION" passage in "The L-shaped Room" by Lynne Reid Banks about how to catch bed bugs; you need a bar of soap which is slightly wet; you sweep back the covers and quickly capture the bugs by sticking them to the bar of soap... somehow that graphic description stuck in my mind when I read the book all those decades ago. By the way it is NOT a children's book like "The Indian in the Cupboard". You have been warned)

Time to go. Really. I'm going. Now. This minute. Any time right now. Yes yes yes alright. Gone.

Wednesday 6th November - The hole in the road - chapters 1 and 2

Bonus Post: This post has been created over several weeks, and the saga is not over yet!

A hole appeared first, in the verge outside our house. We are talking beginning of October, or even end of September here.

That was it, for several weeks. Then, one morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I heard a terrific commotion outside the front of the house. Once I was able to investigate without leaving a trail of toothpaste down the stairs, I discovered that the hole had grown a stalk. Whatever had caused the racket had disappeared.

Several weeks passed, and we came home from a day out to discover that the pavement between our house and the neighbours had been completely dug up. There's an electric cable in a rusting iron pipe just not in shot. I imagine they will send a small monkey in through the tunnel to connect the wiring at some stage.

What next? and When?

Wednesday 6th November - Pay Attention in future...

This was really, really annoying.

I'm making another strip for the Tunisian crochet blanket, in a boucle yarn which was chosen for the blue colours that remind me of the water above and below the Niagara Falls.

I laid it out on the table to admire my progress...

and instantly spotted that it has lost a substantial amount of WIDTH.

To rip it out, or not to rip it out? The difference in width is actually nearly an inch.

So, I ripped. Ow! It hurt, really badly. All that work, gone, gone, gone.

About half of the strip returned to a single strand. It would have been a good idea if I had checked what I was doing more often.

At least, with Tunisian Crochet, you only need to pick up ONE stitch.

BUT, tempted as I was to pretend that "it will be all right when I sew the strips together", I knew that it wouldn't work out. So I'm glad I managed to take the path of righteousness, earlier rather than later.

Moral - PAY ATTENTION to what you are doing!

Tuesday 5th November - Whirly tubes and Singing Bowls

Shame you can't HEAR these.

The whirly tubes have a particularly clear tone - they are not yer ordinary toobes, m'dear, but used for their healing and therapeutic properties. These tubes are in F which can help with heart and lung function and the fourth chakra; a friend who is staying with us takes them on her travels.

The metal bowl is a Tibetan singing bowl, and produces a resonant ringing tone when you run the stick round the outside edge at the correct speed.

We  bought it in the Christmas market in Birmingham, a few years ago. It's an unusual sound.

Monday 4th November - Afternoon Off

Bet you thought I'd forgotten another day in this blog-posting challenge lark already - well, I've brought the laptop upstairs, and I'm rattling away at the keyboard in bed.

....

Having worked fairly hard all morning at this, that and the other, I was nearly late for my first school of the day - djembes at 2pm. (Sounds like "daggers at dawn" - maybe not quite as aggressive and dangerous as that.)

I tore myself away from watching a moody western film on day-time TV - Hombres - and zipped across to the next village, along the lanes, swished through the remains of the flooding across the road, past the pub, the shop and the church, and swung a right into NO NO NO NO NO - the gate into the staff car park was shut!

So I stopped where I was, and went over to open the gate. That's funny - the car park was empty! The blinds were all closed in the classroom windows! Not a soul to be seen, not a sound to be heard...

AHA - Simple, Dr Watson. It must be an INSET DAY - first Monday after half term. Would have been nice to know in advance.

A few minutes later my colleague, another music teacher, turned up - we share the teaching of this class. So, after a quick conversation, we decided to go back to my house for a cup of tea and a piece of cake, and for him to eat his lunch, before he zoomed off to the next town for wind band and big band and whatever, and I started piano teaching. We spent a pleasant hour, setting the world of music teaching to rights and sharing the gossip.

Very good cake, too; fruit cake, made with a whole teacup of cup of whisky.

That's made an unexpectedly relaxing start to the week.  

Monday 2nd November - Epic Fail

Yes, it IS Monday, no, it's NOT the 2nd November.

So maybe I typed the post for 2nd November in invisible pixels - ok?

If I had been concentrating, perhaps I wouldn't have failed the NaBloPoMo challenge on day 2; so here's a post to make up for the invisible one.

Oh bother. I can't think of anything to say.

I've been up too long already - long enough to write this week's to-do list, go for a routine blood test, post the blood test, (did you know that the post office vans are full of Very Dodgy Parcels containing blood and WORSE?), write and post two cards while spilling and drinking what was left of a flat white, (VERY WOBBLY TABLE - not impressed) do the shopping, put away the shopping, hang out laundry, reload the washing machine, arrange a doctor's appointment, update my calendar, read a recipe (Helston Pudding on www.recipesfromacornishkitchen.blogspot.com), read a blogpost (something techy and incomprehensible on www.boggyb.livejournal.com)  and now catch up with NaBloblahblah whatsit.

So, nothing I n t e r e s t i n g to post but you've gotta post something.

have a picture instead

  
hey ho. It's come out sideways. Good job most of you have bendy necks.

cheers!

Sunday 3rd November - And that was Half Term

That was the week that was - it arrived after a

week of chaos, and was spent in chaos.

 

I got through 29 of the 32 items on the to-to list, not counting the half-dozen or more items that got done but never made it onto the list.

Number One Son came to stay for a few days.





We went out to Arundel for a day as a whole family - and I was much better walking up and down the hills than I had been walking around on the flat the previous weekend. We bought Roly's fudge - EXCELLENT. Unfortunately I have now finished all my fudge.

I went for a lovely day out at Pulborough Brooks with Number One Son - that was a really good day out.

I cleaned, hovered, sorted, tidied. (Number One Son helped - bless you)

I went to London twice for hospital appointments. (Lung Function tests showed that the cyclophosphamide has been effective, and my lung function has improved. So I shall hopefully be able to continue with a similar immune suppressant medication - that's a "hooray"!)

While I was there I visited the Saatchi Gallery twice, the huge Peter Jones in Sloane Square to gawp at rare and expensive knitting yarns, and lighting displays (we plan to replace our sitting room light sometime), and Harrods gawp like a tourist at the décor, and Patisserie Valerie indulge myself with Nata tarts and mignon pastries. (I've just finished re-reading "Moon over Soho" and the jazz-vampire was always eating cream cakes in Patisserie Valerie, which was what made me want to go there again)

My piano teacher, who I "re-discovered" on the internet a few years ago having not been in contact since about 1974, has come to stay for a week (hence the housework!). I've had a couple of piano lessons, and in return she has been having lessons on how to operate her new tablet.




Today My Best Husband and I went for a stroll around some little fishing lakes and woodlands nearby at Sumners Lakes. I noticed that I had noticeably more stamina, at one point managing to get up a steep and slippery slope in one go without having to pause and catch my breath.





It has been a hard-working half-term "holiday", and there is a significant amount of work to do before I will be ready for the rest of term, but, even so, I reckon I am embarking upon the next seven weeks in better shape than when I started at the beginning of this term!