Wednesday 30th September - catching up, moving on

 I am now four days behind on painting. Which just goes to show how long a committment to a new project lasts for me, although I have been following a prayer book for ten weeks now almost consistently, and reading a Psalm a day for 48 Psalms. I started at 150 (the last one) and am working backwards. Some days I have read two Psalms - it seem cheating to only read the one when it is just two verses long. Other times I have spread the Psalm - 119 in case you hadn't guessed - over three or four days.

Today's Psalm, 102, is one for a miserable day like today - 

 I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, and like an owl that is in the desert. I have watched, and am even as it were a sparrow that sitteth alone upon the housetop

I am reading them in the prayer book my godfather gave me for my confirmation, in the King James version, which is why I encounter dragons and leviathans and, today, a pelican. Other translations, which turn the pelican into 'I am like skin and bones in the desert' are rather ordinary by comparison.   

I am being driven crazy at the moment because I am knitting a cabled rug, with 200 stitches, using a circular needle instead of two straight ones. You don't have to knit ruond and round in circles on a circle needle, you can just go back and forth, which is what I was doing. But, in an absent-minded moment, I just carried on instead of turning the knitting around, and joined the two ends of my knitting into a tube.

 This has made me very unhappy, as I only discovered the calamity after about 190 stitches and having done several cabling thingies. I did briefly consider cutting the offending link, but the little bitty yarn wouldn't be long enough to sew back in securely and I would only be storing up trouble for the future. I have nearly finished 'tink-ing' the stictches. Tink-ing is un-knit-ing, stitch by stitch, much safer than 'frogging' , which is sliding all the work off the needles, pulling out the yarn and then trying to get the stitches back onto the needles without them running back down into ladders. 

Himself went for a haircut yesterday - the first one since March. It is a great improvment. It is astonishing how much the state of one's hair can affect your state of mind. I haven't had my hair cut since February, but at least I have had the assistance of hair slides and gel to try and keep my fringe out of my eyes. Not things that Himself would feel as comfortable with?

Pictures - these are the latest... I still have blank pages for Monday 21st, Tuesday 22nd, Tuesday 29th and today. I'll catch up at some stage.  

Friday 25th September - random seascape, partly because of the day's Psalm 107, 'They that go down to the sea in ships')

Thursday 24th September

A selection of finger puppets which are jammed into an old mug. The mug has a broken handle which is why it is now a finger-puppet-storage-facility, but I put a handle in the picture because it looked odd without it.

On Saturday 26th September we went for a walk along the River Adur near Steyning as far as a tiny hamelt called Botolphs, once a thriving port back in the 1400s. The church is in the charge of the Churches Conservation Trust, and was open so I was able to go in and look around. 

I had got so cold walking there. It was easy going along a footpath/cycle track, but there were so many cyclists swooping along at a great speed (obviously not there for the scenery!) that we had to keep taking to the rough verge and waiting for them to pass and the wind began to freeze the marrow in my bones. So Himself left me at the church and walked back to the car (half a mile,10 minutes) and then navigated back across the river through twisty turny lanes (several miles,20 minutes) to collect me. Meanwhile I found a sheltered spot to wait and take photographs and do one sketch in a little book I carry for the purpose.

The sketch became the landscape below;

On Monday I looked back over the years on my phone at pictures from about this time of year and chose a couple.

Next month is 'INKTOBER' - something new! I notice I have a file (rather empty) labelled Inktober 2019 on my computer from last year. I shall have another go at it this year and see if I can keep it going. I don't know if you are allowed to join the 'event' if you colour your drawings... do I care? No, not really.

Monday was also the start of the teaching week. I fetched out my little owls to show where the chords are on the piano for one child who was struggling to work out what to play in a rather quaint piece called 'Lazy Bear'. I made up a little story....

Here are all the owls sitting nicely in their A minor chord places.

Oh look! one of the owls has leapt up to see what the other owls are doing!

Would you believe it! He's just farted! He has jumped back onto his A minor place because he was all embarrassed, and the other owls have moved one semitone away.

I did whisper the work 'fart' because I do know it is neither polite nor musical term. But I'm hoping that the story will help her remember the chords. I could always have said 'A minor, followed by A minor diminished, and then E major (chord V, the dominat of A minor, don't you know) in the 1st Inversion'. Somehow I don't think, at 9 years old, she would have found that as memorable.   

Enough lavatory humour. Time to do something useful.

Thursday 24th September - Hello Thursday, my old friend

 I keep meaning to order myself this album

it takes me straight back to university days, playing the cassette that I had over and over again, radio-cassette player jammed between my pillow and the wall as I tried to get to sleep at night. The student in the adjacent room liked his music on loud, and the thump of the bass kept me awake, so I drowned him out with Simon and Garfunkel. It sort of worked - the thunk click of the auto reverse mechanism would jolt me out of my sleep, but not enough to wake properly.

Yesterday and today have been darker days; the summer sunshine has been interspersed with rain, giving the days an altogether gloomier feel.

Although yesterday was brightened up by cards and a pot of michaelmas daisies for our wedding anniversary

Still, I have an outing planned for later today - oh yay - but only to get my flu jab. So added to the complication of how warmly do I need to dress for the day is also factoring access to my upper arm for the nurse's needle. (In the end I chose short-sleeve shirt and warm sweater. And trousers, of course. No need for sniggers.)

Yesterday might have been a duller day, weatherwise, but I finished the crochet blanket that I started in April 2019

I walked into a wool shop in Havant, and was so bowled over by the vitatlity of colour in this yarn, that in the end I bought one of each colourway. I made a granny square from each ball - they accompanied me on our endless treks too and from my godmother in hospital or her house all through the year. When lokdown started I bought some plain blue and bordered each square, and yesterday I finished - every square bordered, all joined up, outside border and all the ends sewn in.  Now what? I do have two more blankets - lap-rugs, really, on the go...  

A book I ordered about the mathematicians and scientists involved in quantam physics has arrived today, a blend of science fact and literary fiction. I bought on the strength of the reviews. I can understand why it got the reviews - the writing is compelling and I keep on reading, but the subject matter is graphic and vivid and fills my head with images that I don't want to see - we are nowhere near quantam physics yet - but it seems that the history of the development of the pigment 'Prussian Blue' interconnects with the holocaust and I'm feeling unsteadied by this because I use that colour all the time. I've set the book aside - I need time to think about it before I read any more. Or don't read any more. 

The list of books waiting to read, and part-read, keeps on growing. At the moment I am partway through

The Man who was Thursday - G K Chesterton

Christ stopped at Eboli - Carlo Levi

The Little World of Don Camillo - Giovanni Guareschi

I Saw Two Englands - H V Morton

On Chapel Sands - Laura Cummings

Understanding the Crucifixion - Fleming Rutledge

Short Stories - In A Gernam Pension, In the Garden - Katherine Mansfield

which is utterly ridiculous. My friend said she was in the same situation and told me she 'had to put a stop to that'. I think I will too.

I am behind on my paintings - I'll get on and do one later today.

Thursday 17th September - I was listening to a radio interview with David Cameron, and there were stills of the interviewer and DC on the screen of my tablet. I was mainly listening for the bit where DC said that he said he got rid of Dominic Cummings twice but he kept coming back.

I went over them with ink later to see what would happen

On twitter I saw this photograph, titled 'My Dad, the stonemason, sharing his lunch with a sparrow'

It was raining yesterday - I listened to Debussy's 'Jardins sous le pluis' while I painted this

Which I quite liked, but I had always intended to go over it once the paint was dry, and I like the drawn on version better.

Hey ho, nonny nonny no,

the rain it raineth every day...

well, no, actually. But it seems like it at the moment... cup of tea always makes things better!

  

         

Monday 21st September - Summer again

 Sort of Summer. 

I have a selection of 'not yet ready for the wash, but not laundry-fresh' garments lying around, as I start the day dressed for Autumn, remove layers in tne middle of the day for Summer, and then replace said layers in the evenings. 

Long or short sleeves? Or three-quarter? One layer or two? Socks - to wear, or not to wear, that is the question. I'm sitting in the garden to concoct this post, wearing a jersey top which wasn't warm enough earlier, and I'm now rolling up the sleeves and removing the scarf that was keeping my neck warm. And I have just removed my socks - they were clean on this morning so don't worry, they don't 'niff'.

I got out my Summer nightdress again last week, wore it once, and it has gone into the laundry basket. But I was too warm last night in my new winter nightdress...

My new nightdresses are very pleasing. I bought them from Land's End, as my old Land's end ones (at least 7 years 'hard wear') are overdue for retirement. I refuse to pay full price; £40 for a plain nightdress seems to be extravagant, and for a while I thought I was going to have to settle for candy-floss pink - but I DO NOT WEAR PINK, even when I am asleep. 

Then I found these; (that's not me - my hair is growing, but not that long and, sadly, not quite so brown)

and I no longer worry about having to get dressed in time for the first zoom piano lesson in the morning at 8am. Who would ever know - unless they also shop at Land's End... it's tempting to buy some more as they make pretty nifty dresses and fit well.

It looks as though another 'lockdown' and more 'shielding' is on the horizon. Well, so be it. I'm getting myself accustomed to the idea that it is going to be six months and more before we start getting clear of this virus. That means March - or shall we just say Easter? We, for one, are not panic-buying a Christmas turkey and filling up valuable freezer space which could be used to store loo rolls and bread flour, even if that means we will have to make do with a papier mache turkey (constructed from defrosted loo rolls and served with bread sauce) - even if The Turkey is what Christmas Is All About. At least we will be going in to lockdown with our on-line shopping all sorted out - last time we were sourcing food from here there and everywhere, and at times it was a little anxiety-making.

I shall also place an order for garden seeds in the next few days - not being able to get hold of seeds for the garden was a bit of a downer. I managed to find a couple of sunflower seeds at the bottom of the seed tin, but I would have loved to grow more.

Pictures - I am two days behind at the moment - three if I don't do one for today after finishing this post. 

I titled this post 'Summer Again'. Too true - I have just moved to sit in the shade (and unrolled my sleeves and put my socks back on... it's all very confusing... and we will have to carry on watering the garden for a bit longer. Sitting here, I can see the length of the sunny border still flowering in full technicolour. Very pleasing. 

   

Tuesday 15th September - What's been happening?

 The answer to that question depends on context.

Leaving climate emergencies, politics, pandemics and world events out, it has been a quiet week here in suburbia.

The schools are in full cry now which means the scenes outside the sweet shop are like this;

 I mean the top right corner of the picture. He went to post a letter yesterday at about half past three and came back saying 'Never Again'; it was almost impossible to negotiate a sensibly distanced path to the post box in among the hordes of children desperate to buy ice creams on the way home. 

The main subject of today's picture is a bar of chocolate that has been calling to me from the top shelf of the baking cupboard for a couple of days now. I think it was left over from my godmother's store cupboard last December. I had some, and He's had some, and very soon it will cease to bother us. 

What else? We've had scones and tea in a friend's garden - this weather is making things so much easier and more pleasant than they might be - and another friend dropped in after church on Sunday for morning coffee and scones. There's no cake at the moment as we forgot to put eggs (and lettuce and strawberry jam, come to think of it) on the shopping order, so we will have to make do with scones and honey and salad leaves - all full of holes - why? - from the garden. Such deprivation. 

It really is hot at the moment. Like Summer. We will have to start watering the garden from this evening or there will be No salad leaves, with or without holes.

The djembe drumming group met for the first time since March. There are just 6 in the group at the moment so we can still meet, (The Rule of Six... sounds like the title of a Young Adult fantasy book) all masked up, sitting in a widely-spaced circle. It takes a lot of thinking about, to prepare the area and then mop up with disinfectant afterwards. It's thinks like remembering to put the chairs back and THEN disinfect rather than the other way round. I did my usual trick of suddenly doubting that I had locked the church before replacing the key in the key safe, in spite of Knowing that I had watched myself put the key in the lock and turn it. I remember that this was a constant problem when I worked entirely on my own in an IT department (yes, no-one else on the premises) and was so stressed out and over-tired that I would go back and check if I had really and truly locked up about three times before I got home. On this occasion I managed to force myself to accept my memory of locking up - whoo-hoo - that's progress!

Piano teaching has started up again. Four lessons yesterday (looks like Mondays are going to be a bit of a heavy day). The other days have just two or three lessons - I'm in no hurry to fill all the spaces in the timetable. 

Paintings? (Just scroll down to the end if you are bored)

Wednesday 9th - I'd been having a go at doing skies, so here's a sunset

Thursday 10th - watching the man doing the roof on the bungalow conversion opposite

Friday 11th

The new owner (also a builder) chatting to his neighbours, while the other men carry on with the roof

Sunday 13th September, copied from a photograph. 

I didn't paint on Saturday, so used those pages to try out some techniques 

Monday 14th September

Well, that's roughly what has been happening, mostly within a few hundred kilometres of when I'm standing at the moment. 

Time for a cup of tea...

    

Wednesday 9th September - Time to timetable

 The school term is now properly underway, (except for those schools where it has stopped again due to COVID-19, but let's not get too particular).

And I am back to my annual timetable construction game. I used to feel like writing all the interdependant variables into ping-pong balls, and throwing them up into the air over a grid maked off into days and times and then seeing where they all landed. It is much simpler this year - I don't have to factor in all the minutiae of differnt schools having different start of day times, lunchtimes and end of day times, and how long it takes to get from one school to another (allowing time to park at thebottom of the hill and walk up to the school with a djembe, samba drum, speaker, laptop and bag full of music books).

No, life is so much simpler; just 17 private pupils and 13 available time slots, no, wait, that doesn't work...

I have resigned myself to having to teach later into the evenings on some days, to allow for the extra time it takes to establish zoom connections at the beginning of lessons. So, a 30 minute lesson needs a time allowance of at least 45 minutes to allow for the changeover, mentally and networkally. Add in Saturday mornings and now I have enough teaching capacity including a supper break.

I'm wondering how the art and knitting and crochet and writing and piano practicing will all fit in during the day time...

The cats have become very elderly and rather stiff in the joints  over the summer. Leo's fur gets a bit matted on the parts where she can't get to so easily, and I have to tease it out. If I comb it she swipes at me with a paw, and I swipe her back, and she tries to swipes me again - it all gets a bit childish...

They are a bit like toddlers - do you remember the shouts of 'Mum, I've done a poo!' requiring instant action to go and assist with nether cleanliness. Ours now come and sit on the hearthrug and wail in a certain tone of miaul. We have learned to drop what we are doing, do a 'cat-grab' which is a special kind of double-handed method of lifting said cat and inverting it so that one can deal with whatever needs dealing with. Whichever cat is being subjected to this treatmeent PURRS, I kid you not. 

Oh well. They are 17 and a half now - we got them when the 2013 SARS epidemic was in full epidemicking. It's good training for when we are 17 years old, or whatever the equivalent is in human years. 

I've always found cats to be a good preparation for parenting - the way kittens rush around and destroy things and refuse to obey simple commands were a training for toddlers, litter trays were a sort of first steps towards dealing with nappies; fur balls for, oh, let's stop there...

There's been a bit of art on the go - I try and do a page a day.

Saturday 5th, St Martha's-on-the-hill 

Sunday 6th September

Monday 7th September - I'm pleased with the way this came out

Tuesday 8th September; I have a book called '5-minute watercolour' that I am working through with more and less intensity. I chose it because the title of the book chimed with the length of my attention span and the depth of my engagement. This was learning how to to 'wet-in-wet' skies.

 I'm procrastinating - can you tell? I've managed to get a few things done today - back bedroom windows washed, some plants watered, oh, and that timetable constructed as far s possible and all the parents emailed...

... there are other jobs that need doing but all I want to do now is eat cake.  

Friday 4th September - Everyone needs their own shed

 Mine is in the dining room. This chair is very comfortable for sitting and reading, and you get a good light over your shoulder.

When I am teaching the piano via zoom, I place the tablet on the standing desk, open it up and angle the screen so that it can 'see' me and the piano keyboard, and then I refer to this as the Music Room. I can then stand at the desk later to write up the lesson notes. 

Now that I have cleaned the windows (this morning's Major Achievement) I can gloat over the sparkling clarity of the glass on the inside, and try not to be too impatient for the window cleaner's next visit.

Here's a slightly different angle, incorporating the end of the dining room table. When I am sitting painting I refer to this as my Art Studio.

Having the paints always ready means that it is easy for me to add a little picture when I send a letter or postcard;

This little bowl of flowers (marigolds, in case you though they might be pansies) has been a delight for several weeks now.

  

Thursday 3rd September - Afternoon Tea

It's a grey today today, apart from maybe half an hour this afternoon. He went out to post a letter and see about a haircut (but the barbers were shut today - their opening hours are - shall we say - random?) and I did baking and window cleaning.

The two go quite well together.

I made a batch of 3-ingredient scones, 

I've got the recipe by heart now - 1 cup lemonade, 1 cup double cream, 3 cups self raining flour. Mix, roll out or otherwise cause to be one inch think, cut out or otherwise cause the dough to become separate pieces, cook for 15 mins at 200C

and while they were baking I cleared the kitchen windowsill and then mixed together a 2-egg Victoria sponge cake 

I've got that recipe by heart too - 2 eggs, four ounces each of softened butter, sugar and self raising flour, enough liquid to make dough look 'right', bake according to what you are used to doing - in my case 170C for 35 minutes in our Philips Air Fryer)

By this time the scones were done I had finished cleaning the kitchen windows and put everything back and even done most of the washing up!

How to clean windows

This is the only method that works for me - and believe me, I have tried most.

You need three pieces of absorbant cloth - old face flannels or an old towel ripped into face-flannel sized pieces. This towel was about 30 years old.

First get some soapy water, Fairy liquid is fine, nothing fancy, and clean the windows with a wet soapy cloth. 

Secondly, take a fresh cloth, wet it drippingly, and rinse off the soapy windows. Wring out the second cloth and use to wipe over the windows so that they are no longer very wet.

Thirdly, take another, dry cloth, and use it to dry the windows, making sure you get into the corners and down the edges.

I can't promise you that the windows will be completely free of smears and streaks, but this is the closets I've ever managed to get to something that isn't completely heart-breaking when the sun shines on your newly cleaned windows.

At least the two brown china teapots are shining now!

And I reckon I thoroughly deserved my afternoon tea

I even had time to construct a little clothes line outside the back door for my window-cleaning cloths.

I've decided this will be the month of windows. I did the bathroom ones after my bath this morning - although I need to rethink my methodology, as I suspect my days of balancing on the edge of the bath while I lean over and up to get to the top corner are coming to an end.

There are upstairs and downstairs landing windows (I'm going to have a problem with the upstairs ones), three bedroom windows, the loo, sitting room and dining room. Eight sets to tackle. And then I can give it a rest for another ten years.   

Tuesday 1st September - Beginning of Autumn

 Today is one of the dates in the year which marks the ending of a season and the beginning of another. 

Meteorological Autumn starts today and end on 30th November

Astronomical Autumn starts from the DSeptember equinox, which I had always thought was on the 21st, but apparently it wanders between the 21st and the 24th, and is on the 22nd this year. Winter will start, astronomically speaking, on 21st December (how come that hasn't wandered off course by a day? No, don't tell me, I'm not absolutely burning with curiousoity at the moment. Maybe I'll look into this another day.)

Autumn term for the local schools starts on 3rd September around here. I am so, so glad that I have retired from teaching in schools - there is absolutely no mithering about whether I should or should not go in. And I am planning to zoom teach this term. I'll tell you one thing, though, I haven't had a single chest infection since February - normally I would reckon to have had several, and be due another three weeks after the start of term. Now there's something to consider.

We have allowed the first stranger into our house since March - the engineer came to service the oxygen machine that I hitch myself up to at night. Himself watched as the engineer did his stuff, making mental notes of everything that was touched in the process so it could all be gone over with anti-bac spray afterwards. 

It was also the day of the last hospital appointment for the year as far as I know. Zoom again, and another new consultant. No change - carry on being Very Careful and do everything I can to avoid catching The Virus as the consequences would be 'problematical' - my word, not hers, but we both knew what I meant. So I will be staying in my gilded cage, apart from carefully considered excursions, for some time yet.

I'm carrying on with my artistic efforts. I started a new sketch book with proper water-colour paper in it today. Here's Hanuman, one of two Balinese figures that my parents had for - well, I don't know how many years. Forty-five, perhaps? They are in our garden now, having lived on front door steps, balconies and various gardens over the years. 

Other pictures; (working backwards)

I'm also getting stuck into piano playing again. It's been a while - I think that I had been doing so much piano teaching for so long that I had got rather 'piano-ed out', but it's coming back again.