Sunday 1 July 2018

Sunday 1st July - A busy lazy Sunday

Starting from last night, indeed; to Ightam Mote for "A Theatrical Event, talked, and themed meal" on the subject of John Singer's Sargent's "Girl in a white dress". Follow the link for all the blurb. The Grand Man (shall we leave out "old"? I think we should) arranged for us two, and himself, and a freiend to go, the caveat being that we provided the transport. All our fears of a beastly M25 journey were null and void - I think we had the smoothest, fastest, easiest trip there and back ever, (Oh the power of prayer, or was it crossed fingers that did the trick?)

The whole setting and story put me strongly in mind of "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith, and I shall have to listen to it on CD again, (or even read the book).

The setting is just delightful, beautiful, magical, timeless - you choose. We will be going back.



Today I have be conscious of the double meaning of the word "render" while attempting to navigate through "Dear Lord and Father  of Mankind" at church - six verses are too many as one looses concentration halfway through. I reckon I did a decent job of getting round most of the notes for the first couple of verses, and managed to pull my self back together in time for the last. But no brainspace left for "Oh still small voice of calm" at the end.

I have made another sour-dough loaf; it's a lengthy process that I started yesterday evening, resulting in a little loaf this afternoon.

I have taken "an interesting photograph" (challenge for July - take an interesting photo every day, draw something every day, sit out in a green space for ten minutes (or was it 20 minutes? weather dependant, I rather think) every day.

This is the photograph;

   
I sense your puzzlement. But it is interesting to me; I have often pondered how all those petals fit into the tight buds, and un ravel themselves into flower. The agapanthus are just about to flower; you can see the tight, point buds, wrapped in a sort of papery kind of cover, and inside are all the little florets, bunched tight like a tub of cotton buds, and then different stages of sorting themselves out into the beautiful flowers that are about to happen. How? (And yes, that's my thumb. Edit it out yourself if you like).

I've been dabbling with watercolours, not to any great effect. I need to work on colour mixing, as my main area of expertise seems to be mixing mud.

I've been working on a Chopin Nocturne, no 1, off and on for a week or so. I put in some proper time and now first page is beginning to come together, sometimes. Hoping to have got it working more reliably in another couple of days

I've completed week one of my www.futurelearn jazz piano level 1 course. All going swimmingly until I tried recording it - the extra pressure sends all my improvisations in unexpected directions, and then I forget the main tune and end up improvising that as well. We're working on "Things aint what they used to be", and I'm a leetle tired of that now (so is anyone else sharing the house, I suspect).

Only three weeks of term left... survival becomes a possibility.

 

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