Tuesday 27th August - what if...

What if all the presenters on programmes like

The Repair Shop

or Great British Bakeoff

or Masterchef

are actually vampire members of The Fey, who need regular doses of extreme human emotion (rather than boring old blood) so survive...

and then they discovered that they could live forever as long as they could keep coming up with programmes where they could create an emotional situation....

(cue repetitive piano music, or occasional drum rolls)

and hold the suspense....

(more music, and slowly pan round each contestant's face, zooming in on twitching fingers or expressions of despair)

and then film the rejected contestant, or the person who has just had a treasure restored to them and catch their tears on a camera (in olden days, the 'Once Upon A Time' days, they would have caught the tears in a crystal phial) 

Of course I don't mean not the people above! 

Bank Holiday Weekend - Monday and Tuesday

and Tuesday?... yes for some, not for others. Daughter works a strange rota system, which meant that Bank Holiday Monday was a rota day off, so she had Tuesday as well. Like Christmas falling on a Sunday, if you see what I mean.

So, Monday - I unilaterally decided we should visit Standen, and once everyone had got up, and dressed, and had breakfast, it was mid-morning. Husband and I were ready for lunch when we arrived around, so, having toiled up the hill from the car park to 'Goose Green' we headed straight for the food. Good plan - we beat the rush. I recommend the spiced carrot and orange soup - just a suggestion of orange and spice to make the flavours interesting.

We wandered round the garden first - the heatwave precluded any type of energetic activity. I took this picture to remind me to cut back my lavender plants when I got home. Those daisies - I love those little daisies. They grow in all the crevices of the stone walls in Cornwall and remind me of all our summers there visiting my parents.

No idea what this shrub is, but I'd like to get one. There was a pink version too.

The path lead upwards and onwards, luckily through a woodland, to this marvellous bothy with beautiful strained glass in the window by the platform bed. I might have liked a few plain pieces of glass if this was my bothy and I lived there,

because this would have been the view...

when I saw the view point from further back in the trees I immediately remembered the viewpoints from a country park we visited in Ontario, back in November 2016; here's a picture from the blog post;



The 'Bruce Trail ran through the park and there were a couple of viewpoints, where you could see across the land to the lake.

Back to the cafe for ice cream and drinks of water, and then round the house itself. There was a William Morris exhibition; the house was furnished throughout wit William Morris designs when it was built and the rooms are full of original papers, carpets, tapestries and embroideries. I only took two pictures.

In every room there were a couple of chairs with little embroidered cushions like these; 

One of the volunteers is a skilled textile artist and made all the cushions, each with a different motif taken from a Morris design. Superb.

Here's the other picture;

another Broadwood piano, this time fitted into an Arts and Crafts cabinet with enamelled lily-flower panels. Honestly. First a sofa-table piano in Ham House, and now this.

There was also a Dolmetsch clavichord in the morning room, decorated with pre-Raphaelite painting on the case. I didn't take a picture; it all looked too 'kitsch'. There. I've said it!

They had the daisies for sale in the shop! Hurray! We bought two, and put them in the raised bed when we got home.

Son went off to his home in the evening; Daughter zoned out on the settee.

Tuesday!

It was the day for Daughter to go home; after a slow and gentle morning, we went to the supermarket for her to do weekly shopping, him to buy our picnic lunch, and me to get some serious planing done in the cafe. Which we all did.

We ate our lunch in a shady corner of Chidham St Mary churchyard, having looked round the church first. I took just a few pictures;

See that stained glass window in the side chapel?

You can make out St Cuthman wheeling his mother along the road in a wheel-barrow. Why? Well, follow this link I used to know the story so goggled (1) it; turns out he was likely to have been born here (Henry VIII's efforts meant that the shrine in Chidham received a proper 'treatment' to stop pilgrims). Reading the wiki post reminded me that I had encountered St Cuthman when I visited St Andrew's church in Steyning some years ago.

There's also The Chidham Patchwork; a detailed map of the village all in patchwork and other sewing.

 Onwards; we delivered Daughter and her shopping to her flat, and came home through the heat (we NEEEED to get the non-existent airconditioning in our little car sorted out!). 

Bank Holiday Weekend - Saturday and Sunday

How many litres in a bushel?

Well, I certainly didn't expect google to give me the answer to that so question so easily...

We picked up four tubs of rotten apples from under the apple tree and I reckon the tubs would have averaged at about 20 litres each. That's a fair number of apples, not including and stray wasps. About 8 wasps emerged one by one from a small hole in a medium-sized apple that I picked up, and swerved off in a drunken fashion to find somewhere else. The smell of cider-factory was something else.

It was hot, hot hot. We (daughter and I) were happy enough to be under the tree in the shade. Himself was wearing his Tilley hat to wrangle the brambles out of the new border, in the sun.

Son arrived home from walking about the town, and got roped in to dealing with the over-enthusiastic rose which threatens to engulf the compost bin every few months.

To cut a long story short, we got lots done, even watering. Those ice creams were well-deserved.

(I've also started planning for school - it gets to the point where I have to move from 'thinking about it' to 'getting it down on paper'. What shall I teach this boy? How shall I move her on to the next stage? Should I panic about whether they will be ready for music exams in November? and so on)

So, that was Saturday. It is now Sunday evening; Son has laid out a setup for the game of 'Settlers' which has caused Himself to pour himself a whisky and give me a glass of ginger wine.

Himself and I had stayed at home all day. Doing nothing would have been a good choice, but somehow the garden beckoned...

I'm pleased to have sorted out various pots of plants that were in limbo; I've been growing ivy to use as ground cover, and there were a couple of tatty tubs of mint that needed sorting out; you know, this that and the other. Between us, husband and I got masses done while the Offsprings were at church for the dedication service for their friends' twin daughters.

Have I mentioned it was hot? If I hadn't seen McCavity slowly easing herself in among the plants of our new raised bed I would never have known she was there. Coolest place in the garden, I bet, until the sun came round a bit further.

She would have been behind the chairs, close to the fence. I think this is the first time I have opened both patio doors this year. The green watering can acts as a useful door prop for the left hand door and I fetched a stool out for the other side.

This is taken from the patio doors looking down the garden. I did a fair amount of sorting out of the veg patch (where the red tub is), and also that dark shady border beyond.

You can see the compost bin now that the bushes behind have been hacked back. The compost bin is the sort that should be positioned in the shade, and so it was, for many years, until we had the old shed and garage demolished. Sometimes, when I open the lid, I discover zillions of worms all trying to escape - they aren't quick enough though.

And that game of Settlers? Father and Son tended to compete, 'stealing' each other's cards, Daughter just tried collect sheep, and I won. C'est la vie. Although I'm sure trading cards for a cup of hot chocolate half way through wasn't part of the standard rules.

Thursday 22nd August - cat update

Chaos, really.

Came down this morning to be greeted by McCavity, looking very fed up. So was I, when I realised that Leo was no-where to be seen.

Turns out that somehow the clever electronic cat flap had allowed Leo out but kept McCavity in. (We thought we had programmed it to keep both cats in.)

So, poor old McCavity was kept shut in, with only finely chopped roast chicken to eat (she scorns finely chopped roast chicken and would rather have Felix) and forced to use the litter tray - thanks, McCavity. Neat job.

Leo, supposedly needing extra special care, has been out on the tiles all night. She has discovered a taste for finely chopped roast chicken and prefers it to Felix. Good luck with that for the future, I say.

Meanwhile I am trying to reschedule everything around her post-op check with the veterinary nurse tomorrow afternoon. Oh oh oh, this feels like work!

I'm rewarding myself with a cup of coffee in advance of dealing with the litter tray.

Cioccolata calda || creative commons photo by Herrickhttps://italyexplained.com/italian-coffee-what-you-need-to-know/

 No, not one of those!

Wednesday - The Week So Far; Wednesday

Who are you most concerned for, Leo or Himself?

Well, Himself has got sparkling clean and shiny teeth, and is reviving gently after supper and whisky and chocolate. (My box of chocolate pianos, a present from a pupil)

Leo has come back without four or five of her teeth, and is eyeing up her plate of 'bland diet' with disgust... she can't have her pain relief medicine unless she eats... luckily she has decided that finely minced chicken does count as a sort of inferior Whiskas and eaten just enough to be allowed her Loxicom.

I've snuck a large handful of cat biscuits out of the bag and secretly given them to MaCavity, so she has had her supper, and her squirt of Loxicom too.

I'm going out, and leaving him in charge of his whisky bottle, my chocolate pianos, and several disgruntled cats. The cat flap is barred. The litter tray is ready.

Wednesday 21st August - The Week so Far - Tuesday

Tuesday was a strange day - we were all set to wait in for most of the day as the engineer was coming to service the oxygen machine and, as usual, we had an 'all-day' slot. We were also expecting a pharmacy delivery, but I had been able to arrange an evening time to free up the day.

In the event, the engineer had finished by about half past eleven, including being recalled by us because he had damaged the clip fastening the thingy to the whodjit; luckily he had a spare thingy in his van so that was all ok.

So!

After yesterday's exertions I felt shattered; however I was gently coerced into the car and we drove to East Beach in Littlehampton through sunshine and clouds and sunshine.

It was proper English Beach weather. There was a fairly purposeful breeze blowing, so some people wore coats, others cardigans and the rest swimsuits and short shorts. It was amusing to contrast this beach;

with beach we sauntered past on our walk along the Thames on Monday;

Admittedly, I snatched the London photograph when the sun was temporarily in the clouds, but in both places there were families and buggies and buckets and spades and children digging to Australia. The Londoners were better off for digging; at least they had sand to work with.

We paused in our post-prandial promenade, sitting in the sun on 'the longest bench in England', which you can just see in the bottom right hand corner of this picture.

What a good idea, getting out and about instead of mooching at home.

When we got back, Leo was having another go at her jaw. We phoned the vet, and got an appointment for later in the afternoon. 

Meanwhile, the dentist phoned and asked if Himself could manage to come in tomorrow instead of next week for the hygienist, to help with re-scheduling another patient.

They say pet owners are fools for their pets.

They say fools and their money are soon parted. 

Well, it was keep the money, or keep the pet... Leo (and McCavity) is being kept in tonight, and Leo (and McCavity) is being starved from 11pm, and Leo (and McCavity) is having to suffer the indignity of  The Litter Tray...

She'll be going in at 8.30, for 'a dental'.  

Wednesday 21st August - The Week So Far; Monday

Monday - what shall we do?

Go to Tate Modern in London. I knew that we would be too late join in with the Lego building thingy; when we got there a couple of staff were getting to grips (literally) with the slow and painstaking task of dismantling it. 

I didn't ask if they had to sort the bricks as well. It was eerily quiet, compared to the echoing hubbub in the rest of the building. I had half planned to bring along a brick from home; red, or black, or grey, as a subversive addition...

We went round the Takis exhibition. I didn't take photographs, just one sound recording. How one puts a sound clip onto this blog is rather beyond me.

The views from the Tate Modern building are spectacular;

We timed lunch to perfection; having spurned all the eateries at the Tate Modern we went out of a random exit and found ourselves looking straight at a Wagamama. Excellent (if noisy). And even more excellent because we managed to grab a window table. And even more excellenter still; those threatening clouds in the photographs were for real, and this was the moment that the heavens opened and the rain was bouncing off the pavements and we were nice and dry and chopsticking our way through udon noodles and all kinds of bits and pieces.

Afterwards the sun came out and London was sparkling and clean so we slowly walked along the Thames path all the way upstream; through a sort of festival atmosphere all around the South Bank and Festival Theatre area, through the most touristy scenes of seething crowdsI have ever seen in London at County Hall by the London Eye (with hands firmly clasped around bags - it really felt almost like lawless Victorian Britain updated to the 21st century). Then under Westminster Bridge and into the tranquil stretch alongside St Thomas' Hospital. Past Lambeth Palace, and ending up in the cafe of the Garden Museum, right by the Palace. 

A mystery thriller I read came to its dramatic conclusion in the churchyard surrounding the museum; it was written by Jefferson Tate and I think it might have been 'The Last Queen of England', so I will have to re-read it to check.

We took the bus to Victoria Station, all around the back streets of Pimlico, and caught a train home. 

Great Day Out.   

Leo-the-cat was behaving oddly when we got back, pawing at her mouth from time to time... oh-oh... 

Saturday 17th August - Bonus post

Sometimes, remembering something is just so easy;

At long last I now always get the right one;

blue for salt (cold)
red for pepper (hot)

Saturday 17th August - Getting Old

We're not getting old, oh no. We've stayed the same for the last thirty years. Although
I'm a bit creakier when I get up, and I never used to need glasses and now I have two pairs, varifocals for all the time and bifocals for playing the piano...

The cats. Let's start with them; McCavity now has her medicine every night - the vet said she has arthritis, although I suspect any self-respecting animal would yowl the way she did when the vet was 'manipulating' her back legs. We've just about finished the first bottle, and it may have made her slightly more active - hard to tell. She behaves very much like a set of car keys; you know, you put them down and they stay they for ages, until you turn around again some time later and 'hey presto' and 'how did that happen' and 'I never saw them move'.

I suspect McCavity is related to my friend Anne's teddy bear; she swore it was magic and would talk after dark, but I could never stay awake long enough to see this happen. I wanted to tell her she was making it all up, but what if she was telling the truth?

Moving on; Leo has the most peculiar fur. The outer hairs are long and waterproof. She proved this once again, by deciding to spend the evening sitting on the mat outside the patio door for an hour or so in the pouring rain. I wasn't going out to look for her at bedtime, but shone a torch round and caught her eyes in the gleam. So she slowly got up, stretched, and ambled in, glistening as though someone had sprayed her with Christmas glitter. I took a piece of kitchen paper and gently wiped off the droplets. Her skin was still completely dry, protected by her undercoat of fine fur. This fur is the cause of a bit of a problem; Leo is too stiff to reach over and groom her back, and this fine fur quickly forms dense felted clumps close to her skin. Every day or so we have to rummage through her fur and tease out the tangles before they become a real problem. She's not keen...

And toenails. Now that they are old (sixteen and a half, probably) they don't go out much. So when they walk around indoors you can hear their nails clicky clicky clicking. I sneak up on them when they are asleep (the cats or their toenails, makes no difference) and snip them (the toenails, not the cats) before they wake up (the cats, obs. I don't think toenails do go to sleep, thinking about it).

Then there's me. I'm fine, like I said, still as young as ever, and I can still reach my own toenails which is something. But I do have to manage and schedule appointments at three hospitals with four consultants and any consequent tests and treatments, and 6-weekly blood tests, and deliveries from two pharmaceutical companies, and the oxygen machine maintenance schedule. and the prescriptions from the GP. It's a full time job. I need a personal assistant.

Which brings me to Himself. He IS my personal assistant, bagman, roadie, housekeeper chauffeur; I wouldn't dream of commenting on his age - he's far too busy to be allowed to be old.

We are also keeping an eye on my 90-year-old, soon to be 91 years-old, godmother. We manage to get up to see her every week - it is a three hour round trip if the traffic is in our favour and we stay a couple hours (maybe hoover round, or cut back some bushes, quickly clean the bathroom when she's busy showing Himself some photos). She much prefers us to sit and chat rather than do housework, so I just sneak some essential stuff in when she's distracted. I'm a bit peeved because I spent yesterday morning hemming some trousers for her, and then left them here when we went in the afternoon.

And my father? You'll have to move fast if you want to catch him;

 he may be a slow walker but he is quite the jet-setter, going off somewhere every month! When I get old I'd like to be like him!

Wednesday 14th August - bonus post

So here are a couple of things to post apropos of nothing

There were two items, but at the time of typing, I can remember only one - maybe the other will coe back to me...

Yesterday, while we were out, we missed a great dramatic event in our normally somnambulant street;

A magpie and a pigeon started a great fight as to who should perch on the top of our opposite neighbour's television aerial (luckily he was away; it saved him a lot of alarm).

The consequence of this epic struggle was that the pigeon became entangled in the aerial and the magpie flew off. (There's a moral in this somewhere).

Another neighbour phoned the RSPCA to effect a rescue; the RSPCA man-in-a-van called out the fire brigade. So there was a large fire engine (heaven knows how it managed to slalom through our road, which is usually cluttered with crazily parked cars) and men in gear and ladders. They managed to remove the aerial from the chimney and bring it down, pigeon and all, before disconnecting the pigeon from the appliance. RSPCA man took the pigeon (to eat, or to mend - who can tell?) and the firemen took the aerial back up the ladders and reinstalled it.

Maybe it was a useful training exercise and broke the monotony of a dull morning?

It was all over by teatime.

Oh yes, the other thing. I've remembered it now. We've solved the mystery of the grey car which seemed to be abandoned outside our house;

 
It had gone when we came back yesterday, but reappeared this morning just before eight. We watched from behind the curtains while a young lad did some texting or whatever, and then he got out at one minute to eight and walked briskly to the house where a huge loft conversion is in progress. So that's all right then. He's one of the workmen, and will only be parking there for another couple of weeks. I was rather surprised at how territorial I felt about the space outside our house...

In other non-news, it is raining, and has done so all day.

Wednesday 14th August 2019 - The Tooth, Ham House, Ironwork

The Tooth has been fixed. We set off for the dentist yesterday morning, both of us playing at being 'Joe Cool' but He was concerned for what I might be about to undergo, and I was equally apprehensive. I'd slightly calmed my fears by googling 'cracked front tooth', and discovering a dentist who puts up lots of 'before' and 'after' pictures on his blog of the most alarming broken teeth, along with a short comment along the lines of 'this looked pretty drastic, but only took 30 mins to repair'. I pretended to myself that this might possibly try, and, to my surprise, this is exactly right!

She poked around, discovered a broken filling that I knew nothing about, repaired it, and then did a whole load of 'this and that and the other' to my front tooth using about a zillion different implements, pastes, lights and gadgets. She showed me the result in the mirror. Howzat!

We went on to visit Ham House, in Richmond.

It is in the most beautiful setting, in a tiny rural village in the middle of suburban London.

This is the tea room in the kitchen garden where we had lunch before going round the house.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ham-house-and-garden

The house is full of good things to look at - here are a few things that particularly caught my attention.

We spent a while examining this window catch, which must date back to when the house was built very early in the 17th century. It is clearly hand-forged by a blacksmith.  If you turn the round wheel, (all knurly so you can get a grip) you align a slot with the spike fixed into the windowsill, then you can use the sticking up handle to bring cross bar towards you, inwards, as it were. It is hinged at the right, so it will clear the pin you can just see at the right hand edge of the frame. You then use this bar to push the window open (it is hinged on the left.). Then you will fill the room with the fragrance of the formal lavender planning in the garden below. Of course we didn't actually do this - the windows were sealed and alarmed.    

The whole wall of this apartment was hung with this embroidered panel. What an extraodinary thing of beauty.

The steward was non-plussed by the recent arrival of this forte piano, made in 1801 (Everything else in the house is in keeping with the 'Caroline' period of the property. 'Caroline' in this context means pertaining to the reign of Charles I - there a new bit of knowledge for me).

Of course I was desperate to try it out, but the steward began to look nervous at the suggestion. It is a Broadward piano, DESIGNED TO TO LOOK LIKE A SOFA-TABLE. What! The keyboard, and the little music drawer can be pushed back and under the table top, and who would ever know that it was a fortepiano? There must be a tricky bit of mechanism in there to make it playable.

Ironmongery was a bit of a feature for me during our trip round France;  

These locks and keys were part of a room full of such like objects at the Palais Benedictine in Fecamp ( a whole load of accents missing from all those 'e's).  

This iron fence divided a secret garden and miniscule house from the narrow alleyway somewhere in Rouen

A bracket, fixed to a house in Honfleur;

This is a modern (I think) bit of decoration on the walls of the Chateau Guy de Rochon, a beautiful chateau where Rommel had his headquarters, and where the plot to assassinate Hitler was planned;

The gateway

  

I thought the tendrils on the ironwork reflected the rural setting of the village and the chateau, the work to restore the gardens, and also the memories of wartime so poignantly.

Monday 12th August - Memories of Monet

France is still close in memory - we've been sorting through the photographs, and I've been adding to my sketchbook - but there are the never-ending trivialities of daily life to get through first.

Today I have collected my new glasses. Two pairs - replacement varifocals for every day, and a new pair of bi-focals for playing the piano. Not sure how I will get on with them, but something had to be done as I have been finding it difficult to bring the little pale grey notes, printed in thin, nearly transparent paper into focus with increasingly atonal consequences. Especially in church, where the light is often poor. I've got three days to get used to them before playing for a 'sing-along' at a Summer Club for OAPs on Thursday.

Other banalities - I chipped a front tooth on the very first evening of our holiday - Horrors! Terrors! Fortunately nothing seemed to get worse. It seems as though a small triangular flake of enamel has come off the front surface. Now a little line has appeared, starting at the cutting edge and going straight up. I shall know the worst (or maybe the best, but I doubt it) tomorrow.

And there is a shortage of one of my medicines; so far none of the pharmacies have been able to get it for me. I'm ok for a few more weeks, but it is a chore having to keep following up to see if it has come in, or pestering the surgery for a different prescription.

Oh to be in France;

One day we stopped in Vernon, on the opposite bank to Giverny, and were rounded up early, straight after breakfast, visit Monet's house and gardens. They have 700,000 visitors during the nine months that they are open - being first through the gates is definitely a Good Plan.

The water lily flowers were over for the season but the views were still beautiful.

Apparently when he was away, he used to write home for news, not of his family, but of the garden...

He chose the colour scheme of pink and green for the house

I was diverted by the clouds of pale grey/white butterflies that covered the lavender; of course they all fluttered away when I started slaking them with a camera

I had no idea that the paintings of the lilies were so enormous; this is a replica filling the back wall of his studio, which is now the shop.

We were lucky with the weather. Every day, except the last afternoon was sunny and hot, but not too hot.

Today, at home again, it is raining again!