Sunday 26th March - Mothering Sunday

Flowers from church;

and flowers from the offsprings;

These flowers will have to wait a while - I can't bear to plant the pencils until I've used them! They are made by http://sproutworld.com/us/ and here is what happens when you plant them;

Sunday 26th March - Three Men in a Boat

All about work

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.

You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.

And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.

But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat



Particularly the third paragraph.

Sunday 26th March - Book Reviews 2

Ink - Alice Broadway

Hmm. Not sure. Can't think what prompted me to get this - must have been a review I read somewhere.

Imagine a society where every event. from your birth onwards is tattooed on your skin. Then, when you die, your skin is removed (the word "flayed" is used too often for my comfort), preserved, and made into a book which your descendants keep at home, and read from time to time for comfort and to remember you by. That is, if your life has not been found to be unworthy and your book is flung into the fire and you become one of the "forgotten".

Imagine this society being at odds, if not quite at war, with the "blanks" - people who do not get tattoos to publicly display their lives. And there you have the starting scenario for the book.

Once you get past all the references to "flaying" and "marking" and "embracing the pain" of the tattooing, you can get on with the plot, which is about family secrets and what happens when secrets come out into the open.

Passing of the Third Floor Back - Jerome K Jerome

I downloaded this short story as a free pdf from somewhere or other, and promptly forgot that it was by Jerome K Jerome and became certain that it was by E F Benson. So, when I read it, I was a bit disappointed - there was none of the sharpness that I love in the "Mapp and Lucia" books. But when I was trying to find where I had downloaded it from, I "rediscovered" that it was by Jerome K Jerome. Aha! If you are not expecting E F Benson, then it is much better!

You can read up about the plot, and its varied history as a play and a silent film back in 1918 on wikipedia. An a bit of googling should lead you to somewhere you can download your own free pdf copy of the story.

Which leads me back to Jerome K Jerome - it's ages since I read "Three Men In A Boat". That might have to go onto the pending list, if only to revisit some favourite quotes...

This could be me;

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome

Here's someone else;

“I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

And another person;

“I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.” 
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Sunday 26th March 2017 - Rescued from the doldrums by a ball of blue wool

Hi folks...

I'd have to go and get my diary from upstairs in order to remember what has been happening - these days I can barely remember yesterday, let alone last Monday.

I was feeling particularly bleah on Wednesday - it's kind of standard for mid-week, as Tuesday is my heaviest day of teaching. Five individual piano lessons at one school, then off to the next establishment where I bolt my lunch, refine my planning and then teach three primary school class music lessons, and then home just in time to make (but not drink) a cup of tea before another three piano lessons and a theory lesson. That's eight lessons which I consider to be my limit.

Anyway, on Wednesday I set off to the afternoon school feeling, as I said, a bit bleah. However, when I got home, my latest yarn delivery had arrived! Whoop whoop! It has taken me most of a month to finally make up my mind which pullover I was going to knit next, and which colour. It didn't take me long to cast on the stitches and get going. I know you are supposed to do a swatch first, but I figured that I would start knitting, and check the tension once there was enough length, promising myself that I would Definitely Start Again if it wasn't right. The fingers crossing thing seems to have worked (probably because I kept them un-crossed while I was actually doing the knitting) to I have carried on;

It's knitted from the neck down to the waist, on circular needles, which is why it looks a bit weird. I've got as far as the top of shoulders now; quite soon I shall have to pay proper attention to the pattern to work out what happens when the sleeves start happening.

The main advantage of all this knitting is that it is making it so much easier to keep to my Lent resolution of giving up FreeCell for Lent.

Although yesterday was a tricky moment for that; I couldn't knit or do too much with my hands as I had the first of a series of annual infusions of the amazingly named zolendronic acid to treat osteoporosis (which I've got as a consequence of the steroids, I guess). They did a really neat job at the hospital - once I was home there was barely a pin-prick to be seen, but I thought it was inadvisable to do too much. A bit of clicky-clicky on FreeCell would have been so relaxing, but I managed to hold back. I restricted myself to teaching just the one piano lesson, and the African Djembe lesson. Maybe the djembe session was a bit rash, but I did most of the drumming one handed.

Once I've finished this blogpost I shall get going on the pullover again - it is SO addictive, watching it grow.

Saturday 25th March 2017 - Broad Beans

They are magnificent!

I planted them in the empty tubes from the Nespresso coffee pods, which I then, later, stuck into flowerpots. It does make them look a little weird, I guess.

I've been putting the seedlings out during the day for a week now; next week they will hopefully all go into their containers and my fantasy vegetable plot will become a reality. The lettuce, brussel sprout, and radish seedlings still look spindly, but they will have to take their chance.

Today is a lovely sunny spring day - I'd be out there pulling up goose-grass and all that kind of stuff, if it wasn't for the wind. It makes the daffodils dance, and it makes my hands turn blue. Cold, that's what it is.

The rosemary has been in flower for a couple of weeks and the agapanthus is showing signs of life.

There's still one slightly misshapen ornamental cabbage left, from Autumn 2015 and the silvery grey bedding plants that we bought that summer are hanging in there, if looking decidedly tatty.

Also bursting into life is all the mares-tail that infests the garden.

The little beasts are appearing between the paving bricks, with delicate heads of fine dusty spores to waft around the garden in the wind. Ho Hum. Weedkiller time is upon us.

Monday 20th March - Book Reviews 1

So, here's a run-down of the books I've finished so far this year.

We Do Not Kill Children - Penelope Wallace

It's a typical fantasy pseudo-medieval adventure - the hero (tall, dark, silent, scarred, scarily good at being a warrior) is falsely accused of murder (murdering children, indeed!) and then - oh, no spoilers.

 I enjoyed it as a fast-paced, young adult fiction. It is unusual, as Christianity is sort of included in the culture of the society. But it is a Christianity that while being strongly moral as regards theft, murder, justice, the rule of law, also happily accepts same sex relationships. The main issue I had is there are numerous noble families, with numerous noble family members, in numerous territories and countries. There is a complete list at the beginning of the book, but I was reading it on my kindle, which makes it harder to flip back to the dramatis personae. So I gave up on keeping track and just enjoyed the plot.  

The Crowfield Demon, The Crowfield Curse - Pat Walsh

       

More medieval fantasy, but this time set in a "real" historical medieval landscape - a monastery, with monks. But with a hob, and angels, and a fairy king (think evil and teeth and nasty, not pink and rainbow and nice). I keep getting Crowfield Abbey mixed up with Crowland Abbey in my mind - I wonder if that is where the author was thinking of too?

It's another young adult book, probably for the same age group as Narnia and the Hobbit. Which suits me as I like both of those books too. There are a number of shorter spin-off stories, about the characters in the book which I haven't read. And there is to be a sequel - Crowfield Rising - which I am keeping a watch for.

Margot and Me - Juno Dawson

I cried buckets. Except when I was laughing. It has a sad ending, but everything ends well in spite of the sadness. The "Me" is a teenager called Fliss, who is not at all happy at being moved, with her mother, from her smart private school at a smart London address, to stay with her stern Grandmother in her rough and ready Welsh farmhouse in a small nondescript village with a  run down comprehensive school. Fliss' opinions of her new life at the farmhouse, her grandmother, the school, did make me laugh. The reason why they had to come to Wales - her mother's cancer - and the few insights on how Fliss had to take care of her mother, are very poignant. I don't want to give away the ending.... so I shall stop there.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

Aha - you see! I do read "adult books" from time to time! (Although I was reading it from my kindle, not from this copy which is for sale on Amazon at £3,750.)

This was the first Jane Austen that I ever read "by myself". We "did" Northanger Abbey at school when I was about thirteen - completely wasted on us. Then, in the sixth form, I found one of those small "Everyman" editions of "Sense and Sensibility" in the library and I was hooked. I started re-reading it because I watched the last two episodes of the television series one Sunday afternoon, and wanted to refresh my mind how it began. I've always enjoyed the bit at the beginning when the son and heir talks himself down and down regarding how much money he should settle on his widowed mother and his sisters, who are left considerably impoverished. Anyway, the rotter gets his just deserts, the faithful suitor wins his suit, and everything works out in the end for the heroine.

Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Another "grown-up" book. I sort of struggled to finish this one, but every time I got a bit bored another view would out. The book has opened my eyes to a whole different way of living, of society, that I am completely ignorant of. It was just not like that in my world Home Counties England, private education, easy circumstances. I'll probably read it again some time.

Dead-Eye - Sam Lewellyn

 
 
A pan-European thriller taking in industrial waste, macho sailors and runners, murder, love interest - you name it, it gets included somewhere. I've read a couple of Sam Llewellyn's, as much for the descriptions of sailing and scenery as for the actual thriller and plot. One for the charity bag, now I've finished re-reading it. I reckon twice will be enough. I'll remember it too well next time.

Sun Horse, Moon Horse - Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff   

I've been a fan of Rosemary Sutcliff's historical since forever. The "Eagle of the Ninth" series, set in Roman Britain, is well known, but there are plenty more. I used to trawl the library shelves for all her books, and those of Henry Treece and Geoffrey Trease. I bought cheap paperbacks of these from Oxfam. Blood Feud is a saga about the Vikings, travelling as far as Dublin and Constantinople. Sun Horse, Moon Horse, concerns the Uffington White Horse.

I'm currently reading "Ink" - it was a recommendation from somewhere but I'm not sure how much I like it. I'll give it a little longer. It's another fantasy. Someone once pointed out that all fantasy stories depend on a medieval-style setting with horses (or dragons - Anne McCaffrey) and nobles and serfs and class systems. I rather think he has nailed it.  

  

 

February WIPs and UFOs

Finishing up WIPs (Works in progress) and UFOs (Unfinished Objects) is the bane of all people who make anything. I'm trying to deal with at least one of these every month, although I continually sabotage myself by starting something new.

This month I have started and finished a hat, twice, as the first time it was too big. (It is still too big; you may yet see it, knitted for a third time, on this blog in another month!)

I have also finished a cushion cover. The knitting part was done a while a go, but I was dawdling over the sewing up part. However, the job is done.

It replaces this patchwork cover, which I am rather sentimental about.

I used the pink and white fabric to make an enormous pair of dungarees for the hot sweater summer when I was massively pregnant with the daughter. The hydrangea in the centre came from a dress of my mother's, which she handed on to me more than thirty years ago. Unfortunately the fabric has disintegrated over time, which has had severe repercussions for the quilt I made with the rest of the dress. That quilt, which had been finished for years, has now become a WIP as I will have to place the rotted patches, or abandon the whole thing. The strip of blue-ish fabric is a Liberty print, made up by a favourite store in York, back in the day. I wore it as a bridesmaid's dress for a friend's wedding, forty years ago. It spent many years as a long skirt, and top before it went into the patchwork bag. The red flowery fabric was given to me by a good friend. It was a much loved Laura Ashley dress, and she had literally worn it out. There were enough good pieces in it for me to use for various projects.

The green jumper is now fully knitted, and half sewn together, as you have to join the pieces at the neck in order to knit the collar. It is now lying on a chair, in a great ominous heap of green, trailing tentacles of yarn in every direction and waiting for me to summon up the will to stitch the final seams. I guess it sort of counts as a finished item in one way (knitting) but is still a WIP. Still, I have another day left in February.  

My final UFO to get done is a sort of destruction. Years and years ago I started knitting an Icelandic jumper for BB. I knew soon after I started that everything about it was going to fail - the body wasn't long enough, the colours were wrong, the sleeves were too narrow... so it sat there, sulking in a bag, still on the needles. I'd knitted too much to go back, and it really wasn't worth continuing. Yesterday, I Did the Deed and ripped it all out, rolling up the yarn and stuffing it into a clean bag.

It would have looked something like this: (and BB was probably that young when I started it!)

I'll make a start on a replacement sometime. I like knitting them as they are done almost completely on circular needs, with hardly any sewing.

Tuesday 7th March - Automatic Subtitles

Having had yesterday's post sabotaged by predictive text, I had this afternoon's music lesson sabotaged by automatic subtitles.

I'm teaching the ocarina to a class of children, aged about ten and eleven, and I've set my heart on getting them to perform "Themes from the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony arranged for ocarina trio". The whole idea is so ridiculous, that it is irresistible, which is why haven't been able to resist it.

In order to provide a little light relief from the sound of 25 inaccurately played ocarinas, and to familiarise them with a Classic piece of Classical music, I have been showing them different versions of  the first movement of Beethoven's fifth on YouTube.

This one is very popular - we've watched it twice so far. The children are mesmerised by the graphic score which gives a surprisingly clear visual image of the music.

This afternoon we watched another version with a commentary created by P D Q Bach, in the style of a sports commentary of a baseball game (hence the ref standing behind the conductor). For the benefit of one of the children, the teacher caused the automatic subtitles to appear on the screen. We got rid of them pretty promptly after a couple of unnerving captions that appeared in the first few minutes.

This was the subtitle

 
that should have read something along the lines of  "Coming up to a cadence here, no, the violins didn't...".

I began to be concerned that the captions would just be a whole series of unintelligible rubbish. Then this appeared;

What the commentator actually said, after a blatant and deliberate wrong note from a french horn player, was "why, did you hear that somebody in that horn section really flubbed (that note)".

At this point the class teacher and I exchanged glances, and we restarted. This time without subtitles.

Monday 6th March - the Wind in the Willows

updated on 7th March to remove all the typos which were mostly introduced by predictive text...

I'm reading 'The Wind in the Willows' as a Lent book (Lent started on Wednesday 1st of March).

Not your usual choice of book for spiritual enrichment? True.  Other people may be reading serious tomes by Rowan Williams or Justin Welby,  or even the Bible. I know myself too well; I'd never get through something that weighty.

                             

There's plenty to think about in this book, however. For once I am reading slowly,  and reading each chapter twice, rather than racing through a story to find out what happens next. That's why I have only read two chapters so far, instead of having finished it already. 

My attention has been caught by some of the dialogue.  The language is very old fashioned (of course; it was published in 1908). Sometimes this makes the characters sound 'quaint',  and at other times 'querulous',  when I am sure that neither effect was intended.  For example,  Mole saying to Rat 'won't you take me to call on Mr Toad? '

Nowadays we would say 'will' rather than 'won't'.  Sometimes a request or something that one says can be taken entirely the wrong way just because of the resonances,  or nuances,  inside a single word. No wonder the monastic rules,  and proverbs in the Bible,  indeed,  wise sayings in every culture place such a high value on silence,  and avoiding unnecessary words,  and thinking before you speak. 

In the enclosed with the canary-yellow caravan,  I was suddenly struck by the different nature of the characters in the book.  I find it easy enough to go along with the idea or the animals all being 'real people' , until suddenly the horse is required to pull the caravan.  He is coerced against his will into being harnessed up,  and Mole has to keep him company as they travel,  because he complains of feeling dreadfully left out of things.  And what of the bird in the cage?  The ducks and moorhens on the river are all 'people',  so why not the bird in the cage, 'sobbing to be rescued' after the caravan ends in the ditch?

For me,  this gave me some food for thought along the lines of 'why are some people more "people" then others? Millions of people facing starvation in Sudan have to be just as real as you or me or anyone I know. (Thinking about resonance,  how about "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" - Animal Farm, published in August 1945... )

These are not COMPLAINTS about "The Wind in the Willows",  oh no,  indeed no! But I am reading it with a view to thinking seriously about Important Matters,  and hopefully doing something about them.  Or even better,  doing something about myself. 

Sunday 5th March - Things are growing!

This was World Book Week. That meant taking a picture of me reading a book to post on the "Extreme Reading" display, and dressing up as a character from a book.

I opted for a picture of me sitting under the apple tree at the bottom of the garden, sheltering from the rain under a huge umbrella. Alright for me - I was under the brolly. Not so lucky for the photographer. As for dressing up; I briefly toyed with the idea of wearing my old grey wool cloak with the red lining inside-out and going as "Red Riding Hood and the Three Bears", (we don't seem to have any wolves in the extensive stuffed toy collection) but, d'ya know what? I 'ates dressing up.

So I picked up a notebook and pencil and went as a famous author, and wrote down everything anyone said that was remotely interesting. When I was teaching the top class their songs for the forthcoming music festival, I showed them a page labelled "Naughty" and a page labelled "Nice", issued dark threats of dire consequences for any child who got their name written onto the "Naughty" page. Fortunately no-one called my bluff.

As for the "growing" things; it was with great excitement that I spotted the first shoots of the radishes earlier in the week - "7-10 days" it said on the packet, and here they were after only four. I've been taking pictures this evening;

RADISHES

LETTUCES

The little bits of leaf I took from the Christmas Cactus back in December are doing well; proper little plants now, with tender pale pink shoots at the tip of all the new leaves;

BRUSSELS SPROUTS (not due to surface for another week, according to the packet)

 No sign yet of the broad beans, although there might just be a suggestive suspicion of a tiny shoot in one of the pots. I'm going to have to start getting the garden ready for proper vegetable growing soon.


I've also sewn up most of the greeny-blue jumper that I started in February. The right side (looking at the picture) is done, but there's still a side seam and a sleeve seam to go. It's a job that has to wait for daylight and brain-power to stand any chance of success. The flash makes it look Very Bright; I'll take a picture in daylight once it is complete.

The last real success story of the week concerns Cake; this recipe for Boiled Fruit Cake popped up on www.recipesfromacornishkitchen.blogspot.co.uk last week, and, having all the ingredients more or less to hand, I made it. I usually make an "Economical Boiled Fruit Cake" which I posted several years ago. The "Uneconomical" cake I made this time is in another category altogether. This may be because I used a packet of fruit which had been pre-soaked in brandy, left over from Waitrose's Christmas baking section. This one is a real contender for The Christmas Cake when the time comes. I'd show a picture of it, but we've finished our up, so you will just have to click the link.

Have a good week, everyone.