31st October - Unexpected Sight

Shopping in town this afternoon, we heard a sudden clatter of horse-hooves on the cobbles.

Three horse-drawn vehicles came round the corner and parked up in the sunshine...

 

The horses seem quite unperturbed by all the blood apparently dripping down their faces and legs.

These were a pair of the glossiest, blackest horses I have ever seen.

A young witch came and chatted with me in a surprisingly confident and friendly manner; her father was one of the drivers. It took me a while to work out that she was one of the hundreds of people I had been teaching last year. They change so much once they leave and go to secondary school.

We hadn't made any Halloween effort, as usual. However we came home from visiting my parents with the masks that they had worn to yesterday's Halloween Fancy Dress party, and all the prizes they had won in their raffle.  The masks work rather well together...

30th October 2016 - 2 days to go

The November "Write a Novel in a Month" challenge and "Blog Promotion Month" challenges are looming - if I was really cunning and well organised, I would have 30 blog posts all lined up and scheduled ready to go.

Now there's a thought...

It's a fairly lunatic idea to have a go at this challenge with everything else that is happening this month, but I'll give it a go.

Talking of lunar things, there's a really nice lunar calendar at http://www.calendar-12.com/moon_calendar/2015/november

I see that the month will start with a "waning gibbous moon" which will become a "waking gibbous moon" by the 21st. New moon will be on 11th of November, and full moon on 25th November. I'm now off to look up what "gibbous" means.

Oh, and in case you wondering, "The Novel" isn't ready to be written yet. Although I am steadily gathering more and material as a result of weird and wonderful experiences, conversations, events, overheard conversations, bizarre sights. And it's a wonderful excuse to go places and buy stuff "for research".

Friday 16th October - Cherish, Marriage, Faith

There's a Diamond Wedding Anniversary coming up in our family.

Not ours (although our RUBY wedding anniversary isn't so many years away!)
anyway, this set me thinking... about the wedding vows,

for richer, for poorer - yes, we've done both of those

for better, for worse - was that one of the vows? we've done that too

to have and to hold - well, we're still together, we still have each other, we still hold hands

in sickness and in health - yes - we know that one

to love and to cherish - ah, to cherish. What a wonderful word that is. Caring for someone is important, but cherishing someone has a warm, huggy, protecting, watching over, looking after, putting their needs first, anticipating what would give them pleasure, attentive, making someone feel special, - all those lovingkindness words and feelings.

If you are cherished by someone, you are fortunate indeed. And if you are doing the cherishing, then someone else is very, very, lucky.

Churchy Bit coming up - skip if you like.

         

for me, these vows are, in some way, like the promises that God made to me. No, he's actually already made to everyone in the world - that he will be with you in this perfect way, forever, and ever. If you have received these promises, and, as far as you are able, are trying to reciprocate them, then you, too, can be in this blessed position of security, and comfort. It's only the final phrase of the marriage service that is different; "Until death us do part" becomes "until your death brings us properly together".

A lot of the of the Bible seems quite distant from me, weird,even. Well, it was written a long time ago in a far, far away land. But I think that one of the core messages, repeated over and over again, could be summed up in the marriage vows. Something to hang on to.

(And now I've got "Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?" going round in my head. Sigh!)

15th October - Tidy-up time

You have to say this in a special way...  because...

Way back, in ancient days long gone, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, I used to help out at the local playgroup. Towards the end of the morning the chaos of books and paint and toy trains and teddy bears and jigsaws and everything had to be sorted and put back into the cupboards.

The children used to rush around yelling "Tidee---YUP-----Time", the "YUP" coming out as a near falsetto. So now, whenever I start trying to do some clearing, this cheerful rallying call is a sort of inevitable ostinato refrain in my inner ear.

This was the state of the dining room table on Sunday afternoon.

Ugh.

I invoked the "15 minute rule" for dealing with things that I want to avoid, and managed to achieve this. A vast improvement, but not enough. But, that's where I stopped.

However, I needed to be able to teach music theory this evening, so a further blitz got me this far. 

Good enough for theory teaching. I have a feeling that keeping the dining room table clear is a lost cause, at least until we live in a house with separate rooms for eating/living, and teaching music. ("When will that be?" say the bells of Stepney. "I do not know," says the great bell of Bow.)

Click this link for pictures of the Oranges-and-Lemons churches. And click this one for the full version of the song.  I'd love to post the pictures here, but there are copyright considerations.
The links are to the www.spitalfieldslife.com blog, well worth following.

13th October - Climbing out of the pit - The 15 minute rule

There are a number of jobs and tasks that come my way that I really don't, DON'T want to do. They hang around the edges of my life like a bad smell that won't go away.

For example;

The Tax Return - probably at the top of the list (and still not done).

http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Minutes

Writing up Committee Meeting minutes (a thing of the past, and never to return, I hope)

Writing Christmas Cards - looming up on the near horizon. I have a friend who writes hers in the Summer holidays (!)

Cleaning the Oven.

Ironing Clothes.

Tidying up.

You get the picture? Then I came across this genius idea:

15 minute rule

So simple - you set yourself a time limit of 15 minutes to tackle as much of the task as you can get done in that time, and deal with the rest another time. So, in 15 minutes; 

I can get down the box where I dump all the paperwork that accumulates over the year for my Tax Return, and organise them into folders for payslip / bank / receipts, and put them back, knowing that the next phase of the task will be that much easier.

I can get through about three or four pages of the address list for Christmas Cards (hint, start at the end of the list on alternate years, just in case you never quite complete this task before Christmas. That way everyone gets a card at least every other year)

And so on. Having made a start helps get rid of that "ugh" feeling. Sometimes I even find that time has run away with me and I have accidentally completed the task... happy happy happy!

12th October - the last 48 days...

The last post was 15th August.

What has happened since??

I'd have to go through my diary (which is waiting for Saturday and Sunday to be written up).

Let's just do high-lights;

August; James-the-tree-surgeon came and worked wonders on the garden. In one hectic afternoon he resolved the chaos of our borders into trimmed hedges and shapely shrubs. In passing he removed a neighbour's tree (at their request, I hasten to add) and a couple of lower branches of a huge oak which has become rather overbearing.

So when our Canadian friends came to stay at the beginning of September the garden, at least, was reasonably presentable. They brought a number of friends with them, who appeared one by one;

It was a wonderful fortnight; the weather was mostly best British, and we stumbled upon all kinds of unexpected delights. Like a flock of paragliders on Devil's Dyke

or a balloon festival in Wisborough Green.

We also went on a boat trip around Chichester Harbour where we saw an Osprey,

 ate very many pub meals and generally had A Good Time Together.

We waved good-bye to them on 11th September, celebrated a family birthday on the weekend on 12th September, and then it was "hello" to former colleagues from State-side. They weren't staying with us, but we met up for supper one night, and then for a glorious Saturday, taking in Leith Hill (I missed that, because I now teach on Saturday mornings), Wiston Tea Rooms and Buncton Chapel, and Portchester Castle (she wanted to see castles and old buildings).

Term Started at the same time. It would be fairer to say that it began to begin on 3rd September, and has carried on beginning until last week. At the end of July I didn't seem to have much work in prospect for this academic year, and I was not too happy about the implications. However, various schools and some cover work came my way, and now I have a moderately full, and completely shambolic schedule which I am still getting used to. Hopefully by halfterm (bring it on - two week's to go!) I'll have got my head round what I am supposed to be doing, where, and when.

Fitting in three routine hospital appointment and three dental appointments around all this teaching used up what little brain-space I had left over. The cardiology and chest clinic appointments have resulted in the good news of "no change" and the even better news of reducing my steroids, and I am the possessor of a beautiful root canal treatment and shiny new crown on top. Long may that last.

There was another important acquisition, but that will have to wait for another post.

That will have to do for now!