Thursday 31st May - Finishing up the WIPs

That's "Works In Progress".

The main peril of enjoying knitting is that sooner or later the knitting finishes and the finishing has to start.

The blue jumper

(this picture dates from 30th July last year) is properly finished now. I was wearing it last week, having resolved various issues, like it being a bit shorter than I liked, and the casting off at the lower hem being far too tight. After much thought, I managed to convince myself to undo the ending off at the bottom, pulled out the rows of ribbing, knitted several more inches and changed the hem to a rolled edge, like the collar. It was rolling a bit too enthusiastically, so I have "blocked" it, sort of, which may have sorted that too.

So, now I only have three works-in-progress left ( that's if I don't count the other two which are still in the "how am I going to finish them off" phase) and new a ball of wool waiting, nay, urging, to be cast on to make something, but I'm not sure what yet.

The Bamboozle jumper is knitted; and has been waiting until I was certain of having the brain power and consecutive minutes of time and enough light to make a halfway decent job of joining the pieces together.

(this picture also dates from 30th July last year). Which moment arrived yesterday. Using my step-by-step booked, I discovered how to graft the shoulder seams

and pick up stitches to knit the neck

  and how to neatly undo all the grafting and picking up of stitches

and do it all over again, joining the correct pair of seams together, without losing my cool

I now have a dozen or so loose ends of yarn to sew in, and then I can start the tricksy business of sewing in the sleeves and the main seams. I did block the sleeves (that word again - it means damping or washing the the pieces, gently pulling them into the correct shape and letting them dry slowly, in the hope that they remember those shapes in the future. "It's the thing that makes the difference between home-made and hand-made", said the expert....)   

I'm so looking forward to wearing it, with some trepidation in case it doesn't fit....

Thursday 31st May - C S Lewis on books

I'm having a slow morning, having fetched up breakfast in bed, and now trying to sit comfortably in the space allowed me by the cat who has chosen the most comfortable spot for her.

Here's a quotation which I am enjoying. I follow a blog which is dedicated to checking attributions of quotations - he was asked to check if

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

was by C S Lewis; yes it is, from his essay "On Stories", and here's the full paragraph;

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one’s adult enjoyment of what are called ‘children’s books’. I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty–except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crême de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/lewis-books-at-ten-and-at-fifty/

I'm slowly re-reading his Narnia series, which I first embarked upon when I was about ten; I used to colour in the pictures as something to do when I was ill in bed (measles, chicken pox etc) as a child, licking the points of my Caran d'Ache crayons to make the colours really bright.

I love his remark about children's fiction "which it would have been better not to have read at all." And " a mature palate will probably not much care for creme de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey". Such a convoluted arrangement of words to enjoy. (what if you have never cared for honey?)

Wednesday 30th May - Food, Health, and so forth

I've just finished a slew of appointments;

Dentist - the broken tooth turned out to be a broken crown; some of the porcelain has sheered off, but luckily no action is required. In passing she (the dentist) gave my teeth and gums an industrial level clean. "Owch, ooch, owch, aargh," I went, but not out loud. "Not so much bleeding this time." I have to say I was surprised...

Hospitals - the chest clinic have pronounced "no change, come back in six months". That's good news. The cardiologist agreed; "no change, come back in, now, should it be a year? or six months? Hmm." The paper he handed me said nine months. The rheumotologist also agreed, both with "no change" and "nine months." She also advised that people needed ten minutes in the sun, four times a week, to maintain their vitamin D levels, and that "you should take a supplement in Winter, this British weather in Winter, it is no good at all" (she is Italian). And you should eat meat, every week, to keep your iron levels up "this Popeye, spinach idea, it is all nonsense." I am liking her more and more each time I see her.

So we had melt in the mouth steak for supper tonight; the first for many, many months. Mainly because Himself is in charge of all things steak-related; choosing, buying, cooking. From when he got the hernia back in October/November last year, until after the recovery from the op back in February this year, standing over a hot griddle cooking the perfect steak was not a possibility.  Welcome back, chef, sez I. No pictures, as it is all et up.

Tomorrow, I hope to be reunited with my kefir culture, which I lent to a friend for safekeeping while we were away. Meanwhile I have set some yoghurt to replicate itself;

Heat up some milk, let it cool to blood heat.
Put a couple of tablespoons of live yoghurt into a food flask
Stir in the cooled milk
Put the lid on the flask and leave overnight.
Hey presto! More yoghurt!
You can use this "more yoghurt" to create "even more yoghurt" until it stops working or you accidentally eat it all.

And some time this week, I shall set up my next batch of kimchi... be afraid, be very afraid!

Tuesday 29th May 2018 - We're back

Did you miss us?

We've been staying here

or rather this is the view from the verandah. Somewhere in the distance, about a mile away across the valley, is Bodiam Castle. It appears and disappears as the light changes, sometimes the exact same colour as the surrounding trees, sometimes a warm, tawny colour, sometimes austerely grey.

Here's our bedroom

and the view from the bed, through the window, looking out across the verandah to the view in the first picture.

There's the bedroom window, on the left of the door way.

It is in a restored, unconverted showman's living quarters dating from 1894. The only concession to modern living is electricity, which allows for electric light (pretend oil lamps), heating (dimplex radiators and a pretend coal stove) and TV (hidden inside a cupboard, which in turn was clearly a pull-out sleeping area.

Cooking happened in a thatched kitchen hut to the left of the wagon

washing, showering and "etc" in a wooden cabin just visible on the right of the wagon, behind one of the two large sofas on the verandah.

We were very, very lucky with the weather. I suspect it might have been less idyllic if it had been cold and damp, like it was when we arrived on the Friday evening and when we left on the Tuesday morning. But the intervening days were scorchers, starting cool but rapidly heating up as the sun burned through the clouds.

We took a river trip, from Bodiam to Newenden along the River Rother, chugging between the high flood banks covered in tall grasses and wild flowers under a blue sky.

We watched a stunning thunderstorm, the lighting lighting up the whole valley as though it was under arc lights, the sound of the thunder obliterated by the hammering of the rain on the verandah roof.

We visited the castle, along with hundreds of other people enjoying a Summer Sunday day out - and discovered that it was possible to take pictures of the far side of the castle with not a visitor in sight, looking old and mysterious and enigmatic 

and just like the jig-saw puzzles

We took a steam train ride, ("Time flies by when I'm the driver of a train, and I stand on the footplate, there and back again..."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-hQ6-biWoo) , except we didn't drive, but upgraded to First Class. BB took plenty of pictures of trains etc; I took one of the very, very elegant carriage we came back in, restored to its 1890 glory days;

(It was beastly uncomfortable, with the suspension jerking and jumping all the way home,

clicketty clack, clicketty clack, ker-thump, clicketty clack, clicketty clack, ker-thump) but the cushions were so soft they absorbed some of the jolting!)

Tenterden is an interesting town; we didn't stay long though. Lunch in an ancient building, 

"The Lemon Tree Restaurant in Tenterden is housed in a 14th century heavily timbered former Wealden Hall House, reputedly visited by King Henry VIII."
https://www.tenterdenchamber.org/businesses/1573535053367214/

and a slow mooch the length of the main street. BB went to the museum, because I spotted a wool shop...

https://www.mytenterden.co.uk/Directory/hoop-haberdashery-listing-686.aspx#.Ww2ZokgvyUk

I managed pretty well - just a box of pins and one ball of yarn.

The point of the long weekend was to take some time away from everyone and everything, and just "chill".

I reckon we achieved exactly that, and many thanks to the offsprings, who did the cat- and house- sitting that helped make it possible, and even left a vase of flowers on the table for our return!

Ah well. Back to normal. But with added memories to keep me going through the rest of term...   

Sunday 20th May - Pentecost

I might have gone to church this morning, through the early mist, but the friend who asked for a lift was unwell, and so, in the end, I didn't.

Instead,we (BB and I) embarked upon Gardening.

God's Garden




THE Lord God planted a garden

In the first white days of the world,

And He set there an angel warden

In a garment of light enfurled.




So near to the peace of Heaven,

That the hawk might nest with the wren,

For there in the cool of the even

God walked with the first of men.




And I dream that these garden-closes

With their shade and their sun-flecked sod

And their lilies and bowers of roses,

Were laid by the hand of God.




The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,--

One is nearer God's heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.




For He broke it for us in a garden

Under the olive-trees

Where the angel of strength was the warden

And the soul of the world found ease.




Dorothy Frances Gurney   

                              

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/gurney01.html

So now, at the end of the day, we have achieved this;

The bottom end of the garden.

This is where the sun is, first thing in the morning, and we've had our eye on it for a breakfast area. I cleared the weeds from the corner (which he had already strimmed), together we moved a stray fence panel that was waiting for something to happen to it, I covered the cleared earth round the edged with bits of stones and so forth to discourage the cats from making use of it, and moved a table and chair down. The other chair will join it once the bird poop has been removed! This used to be an unsuccessful  vegetable corner so the earth is still quite soft; this can mean an unexpected change of seating angle as one leg of the chair suddenly sinks by several inches... The plan is to dig it out and cover it with a weed-proof membrane and similar pebbles to the ones by the house.

We've also discussed creating a path down to the public area behind the hedge. Pro- we can get out of the garden for a walk easily. Con- people can get into the garden easily. We used to have a way through the jungle, without any intrusive intrusions, so maybe it would be a good idea.

Working back along that side of the garden, is a border which is rather like Eyeore's Gloomy Place. Some parts get morning sun, the rest gets dappled shade if it is lucky. This patch, below, is one of the sunny patches. I have dug it over, and planted eight very ancient lily-of-the-valley bulbs which I bought I dunnamany years ago (ignoring the instructions to plant as soon as possible after purchase).
I've put them in the ground just behind the white plant label, watered them in and it is over to nature now.

I've also put in a bit of ivy I've been growing in a pot. The plan is for this bed to have shade loving plants (wood anenome, hellebore, cyclamen, ivy as grown cover, geraniums) and then wood bark on top. We shall see.

Talking of geraniums, you can just make out one of the two I bought last year in pursuit of these plans, in the bottom left hand corner of the picture.

Here it is again; with small, delicate little flowers and quite a few buds. So it looks as though I might be on the right track with the planting. I looked through all the ones in the nursery, reading the labels to see which would be okay in shade. The other one is in a shadier area, and not ready to flower yet!

The vegetable garden is now up and going. I thought "going" was a better word choice than "growing" as there isn't much to see yet. Furthest away is a tub of lettuce leaves; himself bought one of those trays of "living leaves" from the supermarket last week, and I have planted the remnant to see if they will produce any more salad leaves. The other three tubs have been sown with spinach, radish and spring onion seeds, protected by the trimmings from the rosemary bush near the back door.

I have created the wigwams for peas and beans; I might have bought seedlings from the nursery this afternoon.... but I didn't. Maybe tomorrow?

Himself set to work with strimmer and plant trimmer, starting at the garden bench. At the moment it looks like a newly-mown, parched meadow, rather than a tangle of grass and goose grass and goodness knows what else.

Strimming had to stop here; inside this tangle of vegetation are pink japanese anenomes, some precious white japanese anenomes (given by a friend who is no longer with us - every year I think they have dies, and so far, every year, they have reappeared) and another pink flowering shrub whose name escapes me for the moment. It will have to be carefully and painfully (mind the brambles and nettles) cleared by hand...

And onwards with the power tools!

This section has been reduced to earth, but lo! what wonder appears through the jungle? A rose, beautiful pinky yellow, doing its best to survive.

It is going to take another couple of weekends to finish the back garden (let's not consider the front garden for the moment...) and I am looking forward to the finished result.

Saturday 19th May - Saturday again

The days whirl past...

Last week was SATS week - four mornings of tests for year 6 pupils. Schools take them very seriously, as their position in the league tables depends on the pupils doing well. So, instead of being a test of the quality of the teaching taking place at the school, they have become a high-pressure focus on all the pupils getting at least "above-average" or even better. Well who would ever have guessed that somehow the burden would shift from "let's see how your pupils are doing" to "all of you eleven year-olds must bust your guts or.... the sky will fall in and the earth will come to an end".

Enough.

Don't get me started.

The result was that my presence as a piano teacher was not required on four mornings. Excellent! I could have four mornings to recuperate, catch up on outstanding tasks, maybe relax....

Or I could go to the GP for routine stuff and a vaccination against pneumonia (Monday), attend a  staff training thingy (Tuesday) visit the dentist to decide what to do about a broken tooth (Wednesday) and... on the Thursday I ... did nothing.

(The broken tooth (it broke several weeks ago) turned out to be a chunk sheared off an old crown, and the expert advice/decision is to do nothing. Good-oh.)

On Wednesday we took part in a three-car shunt, courtesy of a Supermarket wagon using a narrow back lane ( unfortunately the same one that we were using) and coming round a blind corner towards us rather wide. We could choose a) hit the wagon, b) go into the sturdy hedge, c) STTOOOOOP.

We chose c), and so did the car behind us, successfully with room to spare, and so didn't the car behind her. Crump. We're ok - just an exchange of paint between our rear and her front bumper. She's not so lucky; her rear end is an inch or so closer to the steeering wheel than it was previously. Mr Shiny Brown Shoes has comprehensively remodeled his front end, and his driver's door protests making noises like an affronted chicken when forced to open or close. And the wagon? I don't suppose he even knows what he did.

We've had a week of lovely lovely sunny weather, with a cold wind. It seems odd to be wearing a thermal fleece over my cut-off trousers and tee shirts. Looks can be deceiving in May. I think these rock roses, which came out at the beginning of the week,

are some of the best things we've ever bought for the garden. I adore the fragile papery petals, and those vivid streaks of carmine. Especially the white ones.

I'm always taken by surprise when the paeony comes into flower. I think of it as a Summer, rather than Spring flower. We have one plant left, nestled among a mixture of aquilegia (aka columbine or "Granny's Bonnet" and goose grass;

  I've some more pictures of the garden, but they are on the other device, so that means another blog post.

Saturday 12th May - What "Books" Page?

Ah, yes, I've been logging all the books I've read, only to discover that there are several steps to be completed before the page comes up on the screen.

I've climbed the staircase, and the page is up.

images from https://www.literarymanhattan.org/ and
https://commons.wikimedia.org/ (10th Floor Hong Kong Central Library)

Saturday 12th May - Reading lots of books

I've just updated the books page with

When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman - for the book club meeting on 8th May

The One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Nine Steps - Michel Faber

The Magician's Nephew - C S Lewis

Arrest The Bishop - Winifred Peck

Ezra and Nehemiah - Old Testament

I strongly recommend the first three;

"When Breath Becomes Air" was everywhere in the bookshops last year, or maybe the year before, which was when I bought it, but it took a while before I was ready to read it; talented surgeon writes about living and dying with lung cancer. (That's not a spoiler, by the way!). It is such a good book. I can even remember quotes from it, which is saying something.

"Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" has also "been everywhere", so much so that I refused to consider it. But it was the book club selection, so I downloaded it, and was hooked. Eleanor is a difficult character, but I felt more sympathy for her, and in the end admiration. Maybe there is an element of "too good to be true" in the other characters, but, hey, it's fiction, innit?

"The One-Hundred-and Ninety-Nine Steps" has an arresting beginning; a spiky, unpredictable, gothic romance set in Whitby with only a passing nod to Dracula. Short, sweet. I love the dog.

"The Magician's Nephew"; everyone knows this book so I needn't say anything. What do you mean, you haven't read the "Narnia" books? What do they teach them in these schools nowadays.

"Arrest The Bishop?". I'd like to tell you who didn't do it. You'll just have to read it if you want to find out. All sorts of people didn't do it, but if anyone was ripe for being a murder victim, I'd say the right man was murdered.

"Ezra" and "Nehemiah". Not my favourite books. Tick them off the list.

Thursday 10th May - More... random bits and pieces

I followed a red alfa romeo 147 down the bypass the other day. I had finished the "morning" school, and was proceeding to the "afternoon" school. "Proceeding" sounds like a good word - brisk, efficient, but not speeding (unlike a  close relative of mature years, not a member of this household, who has picked up two speeding tickets in one month and claims to have beaten his car with a stick, like John Cleese). I have to admit to some pangs - but in the end it was easier than I thought. It was travelling too slowly so I overtook it, and put it behind me. Literally and figuratively.

So far I have managed to remember all that needed to be remembered this week - music festival, changed teaching schedules, getting photocopies and so on ready in advance for lessons.... The most important thing now is to remember to do the entries for the music exams for a couple of pupils - the closing date is Friday, and I still have a question mark over two of them which is preventing me from getting on with the task.

I've been having a go at making kimchi - Korean fermented vegetables. Ever since I read

a couple of months (or was it weeks?) ago, I've become more interested in "fermented" foods. It appears that the midwife who insisted I eat plenty of live yoghurt shortly after I gave birth to the firstborn, and I was taking antibiotics for an infection (and that's enough information) was on to a Good Thing. Antibiotics kill off the Good Bacteria in your gut as well as the Bad Bacteria causing the infection. Well, I take antibiotics all the time, as one of the other potions I have been prescribed is to damp down my immune system. Apparently the stronger antibiotic I reach for if I suspect a chest infection is imminent is also known as "Domestos" becuase it "kills all known germs". In other words

The book is a good read, and debunks most of the foodie fads. But femented food (not booze, before you ask!) is a Thing to keep your gut healthy and encourage Good Bacteria (what about the Bad Bacteria? what happens to them?)

I tasted the kimchi - it is a quick version from the Good Food Guide, ready after a day and better after two weeks.

It looks Very Ominous, and smells - shall I say "potent"? Still, I didn't fall down in a faint after the little mouthful, which tasted "interesting" and even "not unpleasant" as well as "powerful". Possibly the substitution  of chipotle paste for the chilli paste, which I couldn't buy easily at the time, and cider vinegar for rice vinegar, will have made it less authentic and much hotter than it is meant to be. I'll just have to go to Wagamama and have kimchi there so see what theirs tastes like.

The little blue-lidded pot contains yesterday's home-made keffir cheese. This is a fermented milk, similar to yoghurt, but using a different sort of bacteria. I bought the starter from a health shop, followed the instructions and, hey presto - keffir. The stuff you can buy, ready-to-drink in bottles in the super market is expensive and tastes like a cross between yoghurt and buttermilk. My home-made brew hasn't pleased me as much.. However, the home-made keffir just keeps on going; just add a dollop of today's to more milk and leave it to its own business overnight. Then, filter it;

and all the sour whey drains away (couldn't resist, sorry, no, not sorry at all,) and delicious cream cheese can be scraped off the paper. Yesterday I had it mixed with salt and pepper and herbs, today with maple syrup. Tomorrow - who knows? I've still got some chipotle paste...

Finally, this is The Best Time of year to be visiting one of my schools. It is a Victorian school, cheek-by-jowl with the village church. The grass between the gravestones is left alone in Summer, because of these orchids. One of the teachers said "I've been told that they are very rare, but I never knew what they looked like." Sigh. I took this blurry picture of one right by the wall which separates the school path from the graveyard. Perhaps she never has time to look.

   
As the months go on, there will be hundreds of these flower spikes, mixed in with all different wild flowers. Mostly primroses at the moment, but some vetch and herb robert and ones I don't know the names of .

Monday 7th May - Catching Up - All About Me

I'd have to read through the pen-and-paper journal I keep in order to work out what has been happening since 11th April.

Back then, it was still the Easter holidays. A sort of leisure time - at least it was a not-teaching-children time.

(I still think of my first ever day of class music teaching, on the first day of term in January 2001; me, waiting nervously in the school hall mentally reviewing the lesson I had planned, and then the sudden roaring invasion of 33 seven-year-old boys. It was an ordinary state, mixed primary, but obviously something had affected the statistics for boys and girls and births seven years earlier. I emerged from the school hall several hours later having taught three classes, and reeling from the experience. Phrases like 'baptism of fire', 'lion taming', 'chimpanzee's tea party at London Zoo', reverberated round my mind as I staggered to the car and wobbled back home for a lie-down in a darkened room. Things have changed since then, but there are still days when I feel like I've been spinning plates for several hours.)

Where was I - oh yes, April 2018. I collected my new car on the Friday, that would have been the thirteenth (don't say it - I spent the whole day not thinking it) and dreading the drive home. To be honest, I had hated the car when I drove it at the beginning of the week - it seemed alien and wilful and sluggish and All Wrong. However, on Friday, after it had been thoroughly sorted out in the workshop, the horrible brakes had become efficient and predictable, the steering less surprising, the gear box more accommodating, and by the time I got home All Was Well. Since then I have driven several hundred miles and am slowly learning the final details -
indicators - switching and cancelling - check
windscreen wipers  - check
rear windscreen wiper - still getting random results when I try to switch them on
Heating - check- I can switch it on (necessary for the end of April) and off (necessary for the beginning of May)
Radio 4 and Classic FM in the presets - check
Lights - probably OK - I haven't driven much in the dark yet

My next challenge is the air-conditioning. I suspect it may possibly be the snowflake symbol but I need to read the manual.

The term started on Monday 16th April - with an inset day at one of the schools. Bank holidays and inset days and SATS exam week and year 5 residential trip and two routine hospital clinic days  have all played havoc with trying to schedule lessons, but I think I have managed to cram them all into this half of term.

Or I thought I had, until two routine doctor appointments, a staff training day, a broken tooth and a music festival added themselves to my diary.

The first of the clinic appointments has come and gone. No change to lung function HOORAY and THREE CHEERS! I'm always nervous when I am blowing up, no, into the weird machine in case things have taken a dive, and massively relieved when the result is 'same-old-same-old'. The consultant is also delighted to hear that I will be giving up class teaching at two schools at the end of July - that will mean 200 fewer children sneezing and snotting near me next winter.

The broken tooth is a minor affair - I'm not in any pain, and there are no sharp edges. Turns out part of an ancient crown has sheared off. I've chosen to have the crown replaced BEFORE it starts giving me any jip, and have managed to arrange an appointment for a time when I'm not teaching - perfect.

This coming week has the music festival, but only four days - phew - and next week the exam week, so there will be less teaching, and the following week is the one with my next clinic day, which means a day off teaching, and then it is half term.

I reckon I can get through this lot - so long as I can keep track of which pupils have been moved to which times because of all that is going on...

Right. That's enough for now - I'll write about the books I've been reading and the family doings next time. Hopefully sooner than next month!