Wednesday 30th July - My shoes told me to do it

I used to wear shoes like these to school.

 

I always wanted the slim-line, pointy-toed ones, but I didn't have slim-line, pointy feet. Not then, not now. These are my current favourite shoes (I have the sun-tan-shading marks on my skin to prove it)

They appear to me to be just a slightly grown-up version of the crepe-soled jobs I used to wear when I was little.

Anyway, there we were in a cafe, having an early lunch together, and just as we had finished our first course in the near-deserted place, a flood of customers arrived and we went to the bottom of the list.

It's a bad idea to ignore me when I am wearing my blue shoes, and when I am looking forward to the best coffee eclair that money can buy. It's a bad idea to give your customers time to get up to mischief. (HE put the "Sweet 'n' Low sachet on top. I NEVER use sweeteners. Actually, neither does he.)

I was on the receiving end of a Hard Stare from the waitress when she came to clear the table next to us, and discovered that I had used all the sugard from that table as well as the ones on our own. I merely smiled sweetly (heheheh), ordered my coffee eclair, and his chocolate "concerto" cake and espresso. The Hard Stare did not relax by a millimetre, but I had returned the sugars to their rightful bowls just as the cakes and coffee arrived. Smiles all round.

Usually this is all you get to see of my cake.

But I remembered to take a "before" picture. Though it was a close-run thing.

Grace Makutsi, in The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has a similar problem with her shoes. Especially the blue ones.

Monday 28th July - Getting Things Done

It's been a productive couple of days for me. He's got a lot done too. Some of it we've done together.

Let's list;

• Half-shoulder of lamb slow cooked in the crock-pot for 8 hours yesterday, with herbs and vegetables and a generosity of (English Dry) cider. Resultant melt-in-the-mouth meat now shredded, portioned and in the freezer. The stock chilled overnight in order to lift off the solidified fat layer, liquidized and frozen in portions as well for soups and gravy
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• Slab of belly pork also slow-cooked in crock-pot for 8 hours today, again with herbs and vegetables and a little left-over cider. Meat shredded (all right, "pulled",) and freezing as I type. Stock waiting to chill overnight ready for same treatment as lamb stock.
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• Pannetone attempted, with great success, in the bread machine. I can't wait to have it for breakfast tomorrow. It was delicious when we tested a some as soon as it was cool enough to slice.
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• One load of laundry in and out of the washing machine, on and off the line, ready to be put away.
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• Barclaycard bill, that arrived yesterday, paid. 
• 
  
• internet order for items in clothes sale placed 
• 
  
• items of post read, dealt with, filed appropriately (in a bin or in a real file) 
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• The quilt that I have been working on for nearly a year finished. It has the cat's unqualified approval.
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• Three drawers of a small, six drawer, filing cabinet emptied, sorted, contents saved or recycled, resulting in another basket of "sundries" on its way to emptiness. (Three drawers more to go!)
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• The brown-topped garden waste bin filled with - garden waste, of course. We suddenly noticed it was "brown bin day" tomorrow. The tangle of twigs and branches that has been crammed into the bin is the consequence of chopping at the Russian vine to reveal the rotting remains of the shed (Who knows the children's nursery song "There was a princess long ago, long ago, long ago" retelling the story of the Sleeping Beauty? The verse "He chopped the trees down with his sword" came into mind when I saw what he had done to the vine) 
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• And after all that cooking yesterday and today, we had roast chicken for supper. Excellent. 

What's going on?

We have both become a bit obsessional about clearing up, tidying away, ticking things off the list, dealing with things straightaway. It's a reaction to the seeing at first hand what happens when things get Really Out Of Control. We had previously embarked on a moderately intensive program of de-cluttering, after the hectic pace of the last few years had meant that piles of paperwork were waiting to checked and filed, heaps of teaching resources were stacked, unsorted, in crates, and every bookshelf in the house was double stacked with books and laden with useful things.

I'm really looking forward to the time when everything has its place, and can be put away. Step 1 is to be a bit more conscious about what we keep.

Don't worry. It won't last. Something is probably just around the corner waiting to pounce... and then we will be back to normal. But hopefully a bit tidier than before?

How to insert a picture - for my father

step 1, put your cursor where you want the picture to go in. Click on the little picture frame in the tool bar. On my screen the little picture is next to the blue underlined word "Link"

A list of words, and a blank square will appear.

now, this is the method I didn't know about until you told me:

Step 2 make sure the words "Upload files" on the left is orange, and click on the words "choose files" which are more or less beside them.

Step 3 Navigate to where you chosen picture(s) is(are), click, and wait for it(them) to load into the blank square. Once it (they) has(have) appeared, click on it (them) to select it(them), and then click on the words "add selected"

The picture(s) should magically appear on your page. If you click on the picture now that it is on your page, you can change the size, put it to the left, centre, or right, and add a caption.

I tend to use pictures from my phone. So I upload them onto picasa. At the instruction Step 2 above, I select picasa web albums, and then choose the picasa album I've uploaded the picture to, and then select them that way.

If you are lucky, you can right-click on a picture on a web page, copy, and then paste it into your blog. This sometimes goes cranky, and then the formatting options don't work properly, and it thinks it is a "link" and not a "picture" and then it when you wish you hadn't done that, you can't delete it properly. That doesn't stop me from trying, especially creative commons pictures from Wikipedia.

OK?  

Monday 28th July - Finished

It's always nice when what was meant to be a quick project is completed.

I started this when Best Beloved was over in America last Autumn. The patchwork top was completed in two days, using pre-cut squares from Oxfam, and a blue cotton sun dress I bought on the beach in Bali some time in the 1970s.

It was quilting the layers together that was such a beast of a job - each of the forty-nine Oxfam squares has been hand-quilted round the edge, sometimes at the seam line, sometimes further in. The padded layer is an old fleece cot blanket, which is what made the quilting so hard - it is too thick, so I had to do the downward and upward stitches as two separate movements. Never Again! is the conclusion to that particular experiment!

The backing is an old yellowy flowery duvet cover, dating from before BB and I were married. Yellow? Well, I went through a phase of experimenting with Dylon dyes a decade or so ago.

I like the idea of the quilt being made from old, recycled bits and pieces. I'm always a bit ambivalent about buying perfectly good brand new material and then chopping it all up and sewing it together again.

This is all part of the "de-cluttering" that is going on in our house - finishing off things, putting things away, tidying. I even put all my sewing things away and got rid of the left-over fabric scraps before posting this.

Coffee break, and then on to tidy/clear/chuck/recycle the next area of clutter and "stuff" in our house.

Saturday 26th July - Be Warned!

We've been trying to sort out the affairs of a member of the family who has reached the point of being unable to live at their home any more.

It probably all started in a very small way - a heap of papers on the sideboard waiting to be sorted, a packet of biscuits that never quite made it into the biscuit tin, just dropping your hat and scarf and gloves on the chair that you never sit in...

The dining room and the sideboard

Not needing the dining room table for eating at, so it is demoted to being a "useful surface". (But why all the empty cardboard cups and half-eaten packets of cake and biscuits on and under the chairs?). Now, of course, you reach the stage of being unable to prepare food for your meals, and anyway you have lost the tin-opener;

The drawers in the chest of drawers in the bedrooms being too full to get anything else into, nowhere to put those books/magazines, (but why all those bus tickets, and heaps of timetables, and more biscuits and sweets and cakes?)

It is desperately sad for someone's life to reach this state, when you find it is better to go out every day and shut the door on the chaos of your house, and eat sandwiches and soup in cafes, and drink take-away hot chocolates and bottled water, and then at home, just to open another packet of biscuits or have a Kipling cake. She used to travel around on the buses, first to various interesting towns and tourist attractions, latterly to the same place, like a long-distance commuter going to work on a regular timetable.

What could we have done, if we had known, or guessed this was happening? She lives "across the water", a day of driving and a night of ferry travel away. Things had to come to a point, and then burst, to reach the right time for events to take over. Over the years we have suggested, nudged, encouraged her to think of moving "to a nice, comfortable flat", somewhere "easy to heat and look after", but have met with outrage at the very idea. The big, draughty, old-fashioned three-bedroom semi was her home, her nest, her haven.

She is now settled in an excellent care home, clean, cared-for, the desperate, over-whelming worries of food, heating, home maintenance, housework, personal cleanliness, laundry, all taken cake of. What was "eccentricity" and "dottiness" has tipped over into dementia, and she needs full-time care. We no longer need worry about her health, her well-being, and her safety.

This house will be cleared and eventually sold. We have rescued the things that she asked for - some pictures, some clothes, a lot of her photographs (there were thousands upon thousands, stuffed into drawers and cupboards). We have salvaged some family possessions - more pictures, family documents, "treasures" remembered from childhood for our own memories.

It has all been a fierce warning to me - regular readers will know of my own battle with clutter and tidiness, the "state of the dining room table", and the New Year's Resolution to take two bags to the charity shop every month. De-cluttering, and tidying, and clearing-up have all taken on a new priority in the face of what can happen if it gets totally out of control. Starting with our own dining-room table... (which isn't looking too bad at the moment, I'm pleased to say).

Friday 18th July - Retirement

Today is one of those days that demonstrates what "retirement" is all about

sharing household chores (I hoovered the bedroom which is a beast of a job - the carpet has gone to holes and so there are four rugs covering the floor-board bits, which each try and throttle the vacuum cleaner in turn, and he hoovered the rest of the house, which is all hard surfaces except for the rug by the settee. I loaded and emptied the washing machine, he emptied and reloaded the dishwasher)

sharing peace and quiet (an hour or so sat in the shade under the low branches of the apple tree, reading, having a cold drink, eating cake,)

time just pottering about (I am now halfway through hemming the borders of the quilt I started at the back on of last year, he was doing this and that and the other, here and there, upstairs and downstairs)

lunch together

shopping in town together (more drinks, more cake, watching the passers-by, feeling that we had earned this treat after the heavy work of the morning)

It's afternoon now, on the hottest day of the year so far. In twenty minutes my last piano pupil of term will arrive and play Debussy and Beethoven to me for half an hour.

La cathédrale engloutie

Sonata Pathétique,

We have to seize these moments, and write them into the memory, to have and to hold against the busy-ness that awaits us over the next couple of weeks. We will be cleaning and clearing a close family relative's house, sorting through things that she has been storing up over the last thirty or so years. Hunting for family treasures, rescuing things that may be important for her, choosing what can be saved, and what must be discarded. We will need to take everything; tools, cleaning materials, as we have no idea what state the house will be in.

Preparing for the expedition 

So, today is a day to remember, to write into my diary, not for anything special, not for some grand event. It's very ordinariness is what I want to keep, to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, as long as we both shall live.

Monday 14th July - like serving spaghetti

It is very hot work. But luckily we bought a Gen-U-Ine Tilley hat in Canada so at least he can look cool as well as try and be cool.

Cramming the remnants of the Russian Vine into the neighbour's garden waste bin (our own garden waste bin was already FTB) is a bit like trying to persuade spaghetti to make a neat pile on a plate. In the end he shoved a load into the bin, and chopped off all the bits that didn't fit. Just like spaghetti.

The garage and shed are now revealed in all their decrepitude. I think the shed-raising is postponed until next year now - too much to do before the end of the year (like getting the windows replaced before they all opt out of their own accord. Trust me, that is no exaggeration).

I brought the labourer a cup of tea. I hoped the picture might prove refreshing... 

 if not entirely seasonal.

In the end we used three bins - both neighbours had some space left in theirs. No collections for another fortnight so that means minimal garden waste production - or in other words, a bit of a respite?

Sunday 13th July - seen and heard

Seen:

As we were parking in one of the multi-storey carparks in town, a man parked opposite was fiddling around with the bonnet of his car. He reached inside, and fished out a small bedraggled kitten, a sort of grubby cream/grey colour. It looked vaguely oriental, and about three months old. It had traveled 20 miles in the engine - that's a few lives used up very early on in its life. I reckon it was reasonably OK as it was beginning to wriggle quite energetically. The people who had accidentally hi-jacked it took it to a local vet. I'm hoping this story will have a happy ending.


Heard:

We went for lunch in pret, and sat next to a family with two young children. "If this sunny weather keeps up, we might go to the beach tomorrow" said Dad. "Yes please" enthused 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old-son. "Oh you can't come, you have to go to school." said Dad. Sometimes family life is not all child-centred. Still, no tantrums ensued, so school can't be such a bad place.


Heard and Seen:

Swallows were scooting up and down the shopping streets at roof level, twisting and banking to zip round the corners from West Street into the Carfax, doing acrobatic landings among the chimneys and turrets of the shops. We heard them all chittering away first, and then could see them here, there, everywhere. No-one else appeared to be watching them do their "Red Arrows" stuff.

Picture of a swallow
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/swallow/index.aspx

picture of a swift
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/swift/index.aspx

Actually, now I come to look at some picture, they were probably swifts.

Friday 4th July - The Old Shed

Did you know we had a shed?

I think the "past tense" is very appropriate in that last sentence.

It's been there ever since we moved in, back in 1984. It used to have a workbench and a bicycle and various gardening bits and pieces stored inside.That was back in the days when it still had a roof and a door which could be opened and closed. Sadly, the paint wasn't strong enough to keep the door intact when the supporting Russian Vine got the chop.

last summer

The shed is on the right. Can't you see it? No, we couldn't see it either.

We aren't sure what's in the shed any more, but I think it is a mixture of rust, obnoxious garden chemicals, and rotten wood. The next task is to shovel the detritus into a sack and take it to the tip. The roof needs a more specialist disposal procedure as it is asbestos sheeting - relatively stable at the moment, as long as we don't start chopping it up.

It's another significant step along the long road to reclaiming the garden and replacing the garage with a Real Shed. There will be NO MORE Russian Vine. That is, if we do manage to get rid of it.

Saturday 5th July - Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care

"Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
It is of such fundamental importance to the human condition that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were deemed to be unalienable rights by the United States Declaration of Independence."                                             wikipedia

I ran out of happiness, briefly, on Friday afternoon. Apparently, according to the-man-who-knows-me-all-too-well, this is a fairly standard occurrence at this point in the Summer Term. In the last few weeks, my normal schedule goes completely haywire, and extra events like concerts and exams get shoe-horned in. He says I become a ticking time-bomb. It is not a case of "will she explode?" but "when will she explode?", and unfortunately there is no knowing what will set me off.

Perhaps I should put one of these on my Christmas list:

The happiness blanket monitors brain activity and displays it on the fibre optic blanket. It has been tested by British Airways on recent flights. It glows red if the passenger is stressed. 

http://www.gizmag.com/british-airways-tests-happiness-blanket/32799/pictures

Last week I was also dealing with 


the non-arrival (again, that's EVERY time this year so far!) of the home delivery of one of the various potions I take every day, 

re-arranging my teaching schedule for this week to be able to get to London for hospital appointments (I suspect that an oesophagual manometry examination is going to be every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds)

concerns that now the drug trial I have been on has ended, and the drug is licensed as an effective treatment for Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, I have been told that I won't be continuing on the drug after all (WHAT! take me off a drug that has been proved to work?!?)

Trying to sort out my school teaching schedule for next year, involving discussions with schools, "the office" and complicated calculations about travelling times between various villages and towns


There are also all the various family "goings-on" that are "on-going" at the moment.



Well, the last straw was small and almost weightless, and it gently floated down out of the blue and landed on Friday afternoon.

I did a bit of shouting, ate my supper (thank you, lovely man, for making it for me), said hello to my son who had come for a driving weekend, and went to bed.  

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/sleepy-kittens-download-theme

Everything was much, much better in the morning.

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.                                                  Macbeth, Act 2, scene 2