Monday 28th January - Time flew!

Where did that week go?

For me it was quite a good week; seven piano pupils cancelled their lessons - I sympathise as most of them were away because they were unwell, but it meant I had three-and-a-half hours unexpected time off, in thirty-minute chunks. That made a huge difference to how I felt on Wednesday and Thursday evenings - as in 'pretty chipper' rather than 'zombified'. Food for thought when it comes to next year's schedule? But that is more than six months away in a whole future lifetime.

I'm following another www.futurelearn.com course; this time 'How to Read a Novel'. There's more to reading than just turning the pages, tha'knows. Last week's module all about dialogue, using a well-regarded tour-de-force as the text, which I found to be fairly unappealing. Luckily they shared the extracts that they wanted us to discuss, so I haven't had to read the whole book ('First Love', by Gwendoline Riley). Which is fortunate, as I have neither time nor inclination. There are other books I would like to read;

Ulysses by James Joyce - yes, really, it looks to be fascinating, and it is recommended that you obtain a map of Dublin before embarking upon the book.
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
Cousin Phyllis - Elizabeth Gaskell

and other books that I'm in the middle of;

The Portrait of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genesis - for the Bible Book Club. I've been listening to the audio version read by David Suchet.
I have been bought special 'sleephones'

to replace the knitted headphones that I have had for years, and that have given up working. They are much more comfortable. The opening chapter of Genesis (the creation) is so beautifully written and read that I don't really want to spoil it by going on to the next bit. In fact I fell asleep, woke up when Noah got off the Ark, and woke again when the story had reached Lot and his wife. This doesn't seem to be a good way of going about things. 
Holding - Graham Norton - for the other Book Club. Luckily I read 'Holding' last year, and can remember a lot of it, so I've just dipped in to remind myself how it goes.

Anyway, getting back to last week - however it started, it finished with a flourish;

On Friday we took my father, or he took us, depends on how you look at it; we went in our car anyway back to The Perch in Lancing. I had Moules - they came in a giant pot like this,

(only stainless steel and not labelled 'moules'), a whole kilo of them. I did manage to eat my way through about two-thirds, unlike my father who consumed them all. It's not as totally greedy as it sounds; a kilo has around 20-25 mussels, and roughly 250g of  shellfish.

None of us ate anything further that day.

On Saturday the offspring helped us eat a joint of lamb that had been bought for Christmas, but went into the freezer instead. It. Was. Delicious. Worth every penny of the ridiculous expense. (BB and I had decided that it was part of our Christmas Present to each other.)

On Sunday we used up some 2-for-1 tokens at Pizza Express (thank you, no 1 son) at lunchtime.

Now it is Monday again. A toasted sandwich and baked beans for lunch seemed a more than adequately sufficient meal in the light of the previous three days.

 Today looks like being a gentler day than it might have been - two pupils are unwell and one has a school rehearsal. So that's another hour-and-a-half off (in thirty minute chunks) which is how I have managed to put up a blog post!

Just three pupils left for this afternoon, and two this evening. A total of seven, instead of the usual ten!

Have a good week!

Friday 18th January 2019 - and another thing

The measurements that I mainly uses for evaluating the chaos coefficient currently applicable to my life are

what is getting forgotten?

the words of a chant that I taught year 4 - they soon put me right

did I leave my handbag in the office of the previous school - having spent the next ten miles working out if I need any of the contents before I can retrieve it the next morning, I discovered that I had put it in the boot after all

I have managed to walk past a card that needs to be posted every day this week

what daft things have I done?

opened an attachment from a dodgy email; subsequently come wide awake out of a strange dream about a row of nearly-dead dogs lying up-side-down under a shelf, only their eyes move, watching me, and related that dream to the dodgy email and woken husband so he can check the email and intercept whatever gremlins were crawling around our network. (It was ok, no gremlins)

what is the state of the dining room table?

this is the most accurate measurement of all;

And this is the only rational response.

 

Friday 18th January - flowers

I've dragged myself through this week - the cumulative events of this month have had their cumulative effect... I feel as though

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Book club on Monday - this was the Church one where we read a book of the Bible over the course of a month, then meet over supper to discuss. The other table was busily flipping through the pages of a Bible and clearly having an animated discussion about St John and the Gospel. Our table dispatched the topic quite quickly, and then we three ladies fell silent in amusement as the two gentlemen discovered their mutual passion for model railways...



I'm following the www.futurelearn course 'How to read a novel' (there's a lot more to reading a book than just starting at Chapter One and carrying on until the end, it seems!) - last week's topic was on the different types of narrator, and 'unreliable narrators' in particular; perhaps I shouldn't have opened the discussion by asking of John could be considered an 'unreliable narrator'... 

What has kept me going, as I plodded home, staggering under the weight of my back pack, after a day of teaching at the local primary school, like the Ploughman who

  homeward plods his weary way, 

has been spotting the flowers; I have seen anenomes, camelias, narcissus, hebe and heather. All a bit unseasonal for mid-January, and all very welcome. I am sure that a Weeping Willow on the road into the town has actually come into leaf all already.

I need to check the weeping willow next time I tootle past; but I can't give as much attention to the verges as I used to, now that I am driving the Panda instead of the Alfa. It is a sweet little car, even though I keep thinking that there is a dinette and kitchenette behind me, rather than just a back seat, but it is not as good at driving itself in a straight line as the Alfa was. I've been caught out when trying to get a good look at something interesting, and then finding that the car is taking the opportunity to try and have a look too, instead of following the road.

The amaryllis is growing at a prodigious rate; it was just a bulb two weeks ago.

And these iris bulbs were Very Dormant when I put them in the cupboard at the same time; they have to stay there for ten weeks, poor things.

These little kalanchoe rootlings, planted up before Christmas, look as though they are going to burst into cheerfulness soon too.

Friday 11th January - The Sea

'was it last Saturday or Sunday that we went to Lancing?'

thinks.

'it was Friday'.

The South coast beaches are mostly pebbles and Lancing is no exception. We didn't find an attractive heart of the town (if there is one) -  there is is an almost continuous straggle of larger and smaller and older and newer houses, bungalows and blocks of flats along the sea front from Worthing to Brighton and beyond.

The reason for Lancing was I had heard of a restaurant on the beach called 'The Perch', and I wanted to see the sea.

Friday was cold and grey, and I was tempted to stay in - but I'm always tempted to stay in and it was past time that I went somewhere, saw something, did something. So off we went.

It was a good call - we had a table by the window overlooking the sea, the food was excellent (oh my, those chips! I would go back just for them) and the weather, undecided at first between getting colder and greyer or brighter and sunnier, plumped for the latter so we took a short stroll along the front before we returned home.

Sunday 6th January - Epiphany

On Sunday 6th January I went to a Splendid Occasion;

Cousins from Florida arrived in England for a few days, on their way home from a holiday on the Continent - and we met in London for a magnificent Afternoon Tea. We hadn't seen them since about 1990, when we took the children out of school to see them off at the airport after their last visit. We were quite a large party, and as well as meeting the American cousins, other members of my family were there, some who I haven't seen for several years.

As I have a policy of trying not to include names and faces, I haven't posted a group photo of us, so a picture of the magnificent cake stand will have to stand in for all the guests!

Friday 4th January - Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It's off to work we go.....

with a box of chocolates to share with my colleagues at a training day all about the new electronic keyboard syllabus

no, not that one, this sort



I'm still not convinced that they are such a beautiful musical instrument. When the guy started playing a Beethoven slow movement with extra strings, gentle drum beat, and other special effects, my first and only thought was 'please, no, make it stop'. But they are a good, cheap, useful instrument to learn. At least I don't have any keyboard pupils. (yet).

Before I went to work, we completed the next phase of un-Christmas-ing the house. Remember the before and after pictures from yesterday?

We decided the easiest way of getting the tree out of the house was to dismember it, removing several large tubs of branches first.

Going...

Going...

Pretty much gone.

I've never had a tree shed so many needles before. Because of the saga regarding the artificial tree (still can't find the power pack) we bought the real tree relatively close to Christmas. We have a super-duper ultra clever tree clamp and water reservoir contraption -  having laboriously filled it with water one everything was in position, we discovered that the tree had failed to use any, even though we had removed several inches from the base. It had obviously been hanging around at the garden centre for too long.   

Never mind - it lasted long enough.

We've still got strings of lights and cards and other decorations scattered around the room - but there's tomorrow evening, and anything left after twelfth night can stay until Candlemas.

The room looks much lighter without the tree. It took MacCavity maybe thirty seconds to emerge from her secret place under the harpsichord and reclaim her spot on the corner of the chest. Leo remained curled up on her chair at the other end of the room. 'There is no tree. Nothing is happening.' and as a last resort, like the owl in 'The Sword in the Stone'....'There is no cat.'  It is evening now, and I think she may Still be on the chair...

Thursday 3rd January 2019 - The Beginning - The End

Spot the difference? Early Afternoon

Late Afternoon

Removing lametta from the tree, strand by strand is a nearly mindless task, accompanied by the steady rattle of pine needles falling from the branches, and the occasional clatter of a bauble dropping to the floor...

It is at this time of the Christmas holiday that I say 'never again' to lametta...

I've only a couple of half-days left to clear everything away; Friday morning, before I go to a training session, Saturday afternoon after teaching, and then I'm out of time. I'm pondering keeping the lights strung up round the walls until Candlemas, 2nd February. It has been so lovely coming home in the evening to see the lights and tree shining in the bay window, lighting up the dark afternoons.

Preparations for work are well in hand - I must have sent out twenty or thirty assorted emails to parents, schools and the Music Services office. So far, I have only discovered on minor error; sendng the wrong invoice to the wrong parent. That's not bad for me - administration really isn't my forte. Not even a mezzo-piano. (haha. that's a joke).

I'm quite looking forward to getting back in the groove again (remind me of this statement closer to half term). I said as much to a friend yesterday. 'I am so relived, I was worrying that you were beginning to really dislike teaching back in December.'  Well, she was right - by the time I get to the end of term I am truly ready for a break! Which is why all teachers NEED their half terms and holidays; if only to protect all those poor little defenceless children...

Ah well; this year has gone well so far and - hope it continues like this for all of us. 

Tuesday 1st January 2019 - Happy New Year

We didn't stay up to see the New Year in last night - by about nine pm we looked at each other and agreed that an early night was in order... although we woke briefly when the fireworks went off all around... and I woke in the middle of a complicated and confusing dream about burglars at some early hour. I think that might have been when the offsprings were creeping upstairs, returning from the party they had been to somewhere else...

Today was a slow start, unsurprisingly, and then a jaunt out to Petworth for lunch. We braved the crush at the cafe, and then went round the 'Georgian Christmas' exhibition.

Then we went our separate ways - the offsprings towards their own abodes, and us two back home.

That's Christmas not nearly over, though; the tree and decorations will stay up until - I'm not sure when - Epiphany? 6th December? or even Candlemas? 2nd February? I'm not sure when we will have an opportunity to pack everything away in the next few days.

Christmas is going to last until the 25th January anyway;

These chocolate calendars were reduced to £1 each at the corner shop. So that's a chocolate a day until 25th January.

New Year Resolutions?

Just the usual; a daily, weekly and monthly resolution. They have served me well for several years now.

Write a page per day in my diary

Eat chocolate at least once a week

Take two bags (of unspecified size) of donations (of unspecified size and number) to the charity shop every month.