Thursday 31st December - 7th Day of Christmas

 only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on th' other.... (Macbeth, somewhere)

I did get out for a walk after lunch in spite of the frost still lying on the ground, and the ice still in place on stray buckets of water. A whole 200 m - but before you say 'was that all?' let me explain...

I thought it would make a change to go out of our back gate, along the secret path we hacked through the dense laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden, and down the steep bank to reach the footpath/cycle track running along the stream. Then I planned to stroll along the path until it connects with the road, and I would be able to complete the circuit home walking on pavements.

Arthur Rackham illustration

The first part of the plan was a great success; and I reached the bottom of the bank without losing my balance on the slithery slope, or tangling my feet in the brambles. The path, however, was lost in a sea of mud... The river comes up out of its gully and floods the path given sufficient cause - like storm Bella, maybe? - and I think this must have been what had happened. 

I picked my way along one direction, far enough to know that my red suede shoes were no match for this terrain, and made my way back, past our house as far as was reasonable (not far, then!).

Never mind. I had had an outing and some fresh air, and now I would return to central heating and sitting around at home.

This is where my problems started; I couldn't find the place to enter the secret path back to our gate. After a couple of exploratory scrambles halfway up the bank, I selected the most likely route and forced my way up, clinging to branches just about strong enough to assist. Disaster - I was too far over; but there was no way was I prepared to go back down to mud level and try again (and again, and again).  

I had my mobile with me - I could phone for help! as in 'ring ring, ring ring, I'm stuck at the bottom of the garden'? 

No. I'd got myself into this ridiculous  predicament, and I would get myself out of it. 

I went down on my hands and knees and crawled through the branches, rescuing my hat before it was seized from my head by the hungry grasping laurels. Eventually I reached a space where I could stand upright and wait until I had caught my breath... then walk on towards the gate and catch my breath... then slowly walk up the path to the back door... then go upstairs and change my trousers...

Maybe it was a mere 200m today, but it involved a good deal of physical effort... at least I stayed warm!

Janus wikipedia

New Year's Eve is a time for looking backwards over the past year, and forwards to the next. If 2020 has shown me anything, it has been to not fix my heart on plans for the future. That's why, looking ahead to 2021, I am not making dreams, setting goals, thinking about ambitions. Not a one. 

Last Year's Resolutions also went by the board quite quickly - two bags of 'stuff' to the charity shops every month, for example. Not a chance. I did keep the daily diary, and the 'eat chocolate at least once a week' resolutions except when lock down severely impacted my chocolate supply.

I'm mulling over suitable resolutions for this coming year... I have bought a new daily diary so that's definitely going to happen...

      

Wednesday 30th December - 6th Day of Christmas

 'How's your day?'

'Oh, just, dull.'

Dull is ok, though; and although the whole day might be dull, there were bright spots every hour or so. 

For example;

Dawn again - it was like a picture book dawn - not fiery reds and so on, but a gradual change through all the colours of the rainbow; even violet if you include the dark purple-blue-black night sky, then indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and then grey, and white sparking frost everywhere once it was fully daylight. Not dull.

We went out in the car, to drop some groceries off to be delivered to my father. As instructed, I knocked on the window of the care assistant's lair to let them know I had arrived. 'Here, I'll open the window, just pass me the bag,' It was, I have to say, mildly entertaining to watch the care assistant trying to make a bunch of bananas and half a dozen eggs go through the inadequate gap, before giving up the idea and walking round to the front door to collect them. Not dull.

When I got back into the car, we discovered one of my Christmas presents still behind the passenger seat. That solved the puzzle of 'what did she give me for Christmas?', and also gave the lie to 'Christmas comes but once a year'; Not dull!   

We had chicken katsu curry for lunch - a new recipe - and rather good, followed by JAM AND CREAM DOUGHNUTS! Oh wow! Not dull.

The sun did come out, and I managed a walk around the block after lunch - 850m - with the cold pinching at my nose and seeping into my fingers in spite of thermal gloves and hands in my pocketses. These walks are making a small difference to my stamina and breathing, even though I have a mental image of 'throwing myself out of the house,' and rush out before I can change my mind.

Now, you may be wondering how a 'walk around the block' can vary so much in length... on our housing estate there are a number of 'roads' and 'drives' and 'avenues' and 'ways' which all intersect, so it is possible to choose how far, and how much of a gradient I am prepared to tackle. Back in the Summer I was doing the longest circuit, taking in the far side of the duck pond, and it is my aim to go back to this distance, and more, if I can persuade myself.

So we walked past the house where they have decorated the tree in the garden with Christmas baubles, paused to let another walker go past by a clump of wild strawberry plants growing in the gutter, one of them in flower!, noticed some daffodils so close to coming into flower, and stopped to chat to someone we know. Not dull.

Bearing in mind the ancient Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times', I'll settle for 'dull'!   

Tuesday 29th December - 4th day of Christmas

 I watched the dawn again - quite easy, as it is still dark at 7 am, and we are tending to wake at about 6 which is not our preferred hour. The world outside my bedroom window is actually much more colourful before the day begins;

Once dawn had become day the sky was a uniform grey, the roof tops brownish grey, and the tree opposite a greenish brownish grey, not as bright as the picture.

Some lucky people woke up to snow - someone tweeted a picture of their garden with the caption 'Narnia', looking something like this;

 (It's a bit of a conundrum how to draw white snow on white paper - I've put off trying to paint the snowdrops coming out in the garden for the same reason) 

According the to weather report at lunchtime there is a slight chance we may get snow for New Year's Day. I'm not getting my hopes up...

I never did finish posting all those pictures of weird and wonderful teas from my Advent calendar. I have now tried nearly all of them, except coconut and chocolate tea which went straight to the worms in the compost bin. I even drank the beetroot tea - a pretty pale pink, and tasting mostly of orange. I have reverted to English Breakfast.

It's a bit annoying that the Twinings tea bags, of which we appear to have several hundred, can't go straight into the compost after use. Last year's compost is full of skeletal vestigial teabags, ghosts of tea-times past. Now I carefully tear open the bags and tip the leaves into the teapot and chuck the bag into the bin. As soon as I have drunk another 100 cups of tea I shall change brands. Or just stick with loose tea - even tea-bag tea tastes better when released from the little bag.

A pot of tea is a statement of love and warmth and comfort, in a way that a mug of tea isn't.

It' around 4pm and I have just brought in the tea-tray; mine is in the cup and saucer - a proper breakfast cup and saucer, the last survivor of the 'Polruan Breakfast Set' used by my father's family when he was little, and used by our family when I was little. It was made by T G Green in Church Gresley, Cornwall; they are more famous for the blue and white striped china which you can still get today.

I weighed myself this morning; it could have been a lot worse. My calorie control system seems to be working; in order to avoid gaining the kilos (I used to read the scales in stones and pounds, but the numbers for kilos are bigger and easier to read) I simply ensure that Himself eats half as much again, or more than half, than I do. Hence the little and large slices of cake. This is another whiskified wonder; the fumes as I open the tin are still strong enough to make me take a step back, and could explain why my slice is more of a ragged chunk.

If dawn came at 8am, dusk has fallen at half past four or thereabouts. We staggered round the block at about half past two - 880m this time - I was staggering because it was slightly uphill apart from the home stretch, and he was staggering because it is hard for hi to walk so slowly with his long legs. That's three days in a row...

   

Monday 28th December 2020 - 3rd Day of Christmas

 Woke up to a white morning, no, not snow, but frost.

I also woke to the glad thought that I have the whole of this week off, and my diary for the week is completely empty!

After the second coffee I put on a coat and hat and scarf and gloves and went for a slow walk... it started to rain quite heavily soon after we left the front door... so we turned back... and the rain stopped. Still, it cleared the frost.

And it was enough to clear my head. 

Today was the day for getting acquainted with some of my Christmas presents; a couple of tubes of M Graham watercolours, and the Rosemary & Co Eradicator brush.

I cleared out two of the little sections in my china tray, to add Hansa Yellow, Pale Green, Crimson Alizarin and Deep Ultramarine Violet. They are glorious

 I'm also starting a new sketchbook, this time A4, which feels a bit ambitious. It is a statement of hope, as much as anything, in this current lockdown. What shall I sketch?

The Eradicator brush is designed to lift off the paint; I've watched a couple of videos but I need to watch some more. "I use it to create veins in leaves, and also window frames" says one blogger. I started with the leaves, but it looks as though the dampness or wetness of the paint is important. Making lines in the blue slurps of paint, and creating a window frame were the most successful.

Beginning any brand new book - sketch book, notebook, is always a bit scary. In the past I have tended to start at the back, in the hope that I will have improved sufficiently by the time I get to the front in order not to mess up the first page. Recently I read a suggestion that a good way to start a sketchbook is with drawing the pens, brushes and paints you are using. I have 'cheated' even more; these two pages are the inside front cover of the book, and the facing page, so in my mind they don't belong to the main part of the book.

I've started reading Georgette Heyer's Regency Romance 'Friday's Child'. A real paperback version, printed back in 1976, so I've had it a little while

. 

When I opened the book I was tempted to download a Kindle version. The pages are yellow, the glue is no longer sticking, and the print is minute...

I can just about read it comfortably if I shine the reading light on it. I reckon I'm overdue for the opticians (and the dentist and whatever else needs doing). Those days of reading books by the light of a torch under the bedclothes are L o n g G o n e. 

I don't think I've read one of her romances for years and years... there is a row of them on the top shelf so I've plenty to look forward to over the coming year.

 

Sunday 27th December - 2nd day of Christmas

Christmas Dinner - Lamb tagine with pasta

 

Christmas Day 

As almost everyone else must be saying - was that the weirdest Christmas ever?

It started normally-ish; opening stocking presents at breakfast time, and zoom church seems fairly normal these days. Several members of the zoom congregation were still in pyjamas and dressing gowns; so much more practical for church these days.

We had opened our presents soon after. This was a fairly tricky task; so many of the parcels were un-labelled this year. We are both in the habit of making a list of who gave what, and had to make several guesses. Then lunch; there was a small turkey in the fridge; we eyed it up and opted for lamb tagine from the freezer instead. Good call. In the afternoon we zoomed the offspring and watched them open their presents after their celebration Christmas meal of favourite Chinese dishes. This provided an excellent opportunity to revise our lists.

Boxing Day - 1st Day of  Christmas

I spent The Entire Morning, starting at 10:30, prepping the turkey, prepping the veg, prepping the accompaniments, mostly successfully. The only casualty was the bread sauce; the milk was quietly sitting in a jug infusing the flavours of peppercorns, cloves, nutmeg and onion when suddenly it was accidentally launched floor-wards, landing in the cat-food bowl which, being glass, shattered. Himself went upstairs and and changed his trousers, which had been sprayed with flavour-some milk, and I swept up the mix of cat food, glass, spices and onions. Floor-washing was the next unscheduled activity (that had been on the to-do list for a few days so was glad to get that done).

So, our Christmas meal was turkey, gravy, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, roast carrots, red cabbage, sprouts, bacon and sausage meat balls, and cranberry sauce. No bread sauce, and no stuffing. It was all very good... but was it worth five hours prep and cooking, followed by an hour to clear the kitchen (3 roasting tines, three saucepans, assorted utensils and plates and serving dishes? Yesterday's prep was 5 mins (remove container from freezer and place in oven) and clearing up was maybe 10 minutes?

Which brings us to today...

or maybe last night; Storm Bella was fairly bumptious round our way and it was pretty noisy. So this morning I was feeling slow and lazy and lacksadaisical.

Much to my amazement, I suddenly found some energy after lunch. This could be because I had eaten most of the chocolate Santas in Christmas stocking. So we slowly walked round the block in the last of the afternoon sunshine. I have come to the conclusion that every direction from our house is more or less uphill, if only slightly. Halfway round the circuit I was considering sending Himself home to fetch the car, but luckily the downhill gradient started and I managed to complete the distance. All 800m!

We have just finished watching 'The Sound of Music'; I don't think I have watched it for about thirty years. It was almost like watching it for the first time...

The chair is empty because Himself has just gone to fetch me a drink...

   

Thursday 24th December - Christmas Eve

 I'm about to start (!) sending out the e-cards - and before I did that, here's a card for all the readers of this blog, family, friends, and anyone who stumbles across this page;

It should say 'Merry Christmas and Happy New Year', but lettering is tricky to carve out backwards.

 I do hope you all find some happiness and merriment as the days go by. 

Sunday 20th December - Catching up on drawings

Feel free to skip this post as it is only about drawings (and a few comments)  

I've not been very methodical about keeping the sketchbook going - all kinds of things have been falling to the wayside, especially at the beginning of the month when we were far more concerned with my father's health (he's now back in his flat after a couple of weeks in hospital). So there re about six or seven empty pages. I just fill them up when I'm in the mood.   

Today the sky was black and threatening. I've usually got my sketchbook upstairs beside my bed in the morning, which is why so many sketches are of the early morning sky. The down side of this is that if I do a sketch, I will use fountain pen ink, and maybe Derwent Inktense pencils which you use water with to turn them  - inky.

(Saturday's page will get something added eventually!) After I'd spent a short while looking at the inky lines, I took a brush and went over the lines with water - I couldn't check the scene outside the bedroom window because the clouds had thinned and pale blue sky was showing through the gaps.

Here's another dawn from earlier in the week. I copied the sky, but added trees and a hill top rather than the tangled arrangement of houses and rooves and television aerials and telephone wires that forms my view.

I'm trying to work out how I want to use the sketch book; do I want to journal my day?

That would mean using just an ink pen to draw in bed, instead of reading a book.... I write a page-a-day diary, but there's not much space for sketching in it, and the paper is completely unsuitable for watercolour. (Watercolour paper isn't that wonderful for ink...)

I am pleased with this page;

The Advent book I am reading is reflections on poems by R S Thomas, put together by Carys Walsh. The poem for last Sunday was this one

Wrong?

Where is that place apart
you summon us to? Noisily
we seek it and have no time
to stay. Stars are distant;
is it more distant still,
out in the dark in the shadow
of thought itself? No wonder
it recedes as we calculate
its proximity in light years.

Maybe we were mistaken
at the beginning or took later
a wrong turning. In curved space
one can travel for ever and not recognise
one’s arrivals. I feel rather
you are at our shoulder, whispering
of the still pool we could sit down
by; of the tree of quietness
that is at hand; cautioning us
to prepare not for the breathless journeys
into confusion, but for the stepping
aside through the invisible
veil that is about us into a state
not place of innocence and delight.

The poem, especially the last part, made quite an impression, which is why I painted the picture and copied out part of the poem.

's 

Sunday 20th December - Advent at home - 4

 

The is the last of the four 'Advent at Home' posts - to see posts from the other participants, go to Angela Almond's blog Tracing Rainbows 

I've been using poems from the Advent Book group I joined, taken from Carys Walsh's Advent book 'Frequencies of God'

This week's theme is 'Birthing', starting with the poem 'The Un-born' by R S Thomas;

The Un-Born – R S Thomas 

I have seen the child in the womb,

neither asking to be born

or not to be born, biding its time

without the knowledge of time,

model for the sculptor who would depict

the tranquillity that inheres

before thought, or the purity of thought

without language. Its smile forgave

the anachronism of the nomenclature

that would keep it foetal. Its hands

opened delicately as flowers

in innocency’s garden, ignorant

of the hands growing to gather them

for innocency’s grave.

Was its part written? I have seen

it waiting breathlessly in the wings

to come forth on to a stage

of soil or concrete, where wings

are a memory only or an aspiration. 

I too, have seen a child in the womb, my own, twice, back in the 1980s. We were given polaroid pictures of what looked like stars in the night sky. It took faith and determination to form the curled outline out of the baby from the apparently random shapes in the picture. Scans are much clearer these days...

 This evening I looked out to see if I could see ‘the Advent Star’; formed by the conjunction of Saturn and Venus, lined up together to make a brighter spark in the darkness. (Look for the moon, track right, and down a bit, and there it is!) I was lucky this evening, and there were even radiant lines shooting out from the star.

 In a time like this, when so many hopes, dreams and plans have been disrupted by the pandemic, going back to the small centre of things is a way of getting through. I saw this posted on Twitter this morning... 

(written by Christian Aid Scotland)

Thursday 17th December - Christmas Tree

 Oh. My. Word. Just a week until Christmas Eve.

Yesterday we gave up waiting for the new lights to be delivered, that we had planned to arrange around the bay windows. So instead, Himself and I cleaned the bay windows  (you might remember that cleaning all the windows in the house was my project for - was it September? August? Just one window left to do now, might leave that for Spring cleaning before Easter). 

Today we put up the tree. And decorated it. Well, most of it. There's still one side left to do. We've turned the tree so that from the street and from this side it looks okay; 

it's just looking a bit plain from the other side;

I don't know what has happened to the bag of 'tree tinsel'; bits of every different length that I lay along the branches. I can hear my mother saying 'the tinsel should look like snow lying on the branches'; we NEVER had it going round and round the tree like the pictures in books. Each piece had to be draped individually. Then the baubles, 'just red and silver - put those yellow and blue and green and purple ones round the back', and the finally silver lametta. 'Just a few strands at a time, hang them over the tips of the branches, work up from the bottom, until the tree looks as though it is covered in icicles'.

I have broken with this tradition by not having any tinsel, and I have gold, as well as silver and red baubles. You may be wondering why I haven't mentioned lights; about four or five years ago we bought a 5'6" artificial 'pre-lit' tree.

This year is the first year I have really struggled to decorate the tree, balancing on the step stool and reaching up and over to hang the baubles and so on. We have thought up a Cunning Plan; the tree is made in three sections, plugged together. We shall experiment when it comes to putting it away, and see if it is possible to assemble just the top two sections.

I never thought I would hear myself say it, but maybe, just maybe, a smaller tree might be an idea... 

I haven't attempted today's Advent tea...

or yesterday's Advent tea... I lack a spirit of adventure at the moment.

Yesterday, Wednesday, got off to a slow start; me and the cat, us two, had a bit of a lie-in, all very warm and cosy. Might do the same again tomorrow...

Tuesday 15th December

 Sooooup of the evening, beautiful sooup

It was delicious at suppertime - lentil and carrot with a certain amount of chilli. But by 12 midnight, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am we were a bit bored of the flavour, and would have much preferred to be asleep. So we won't be buying that particular soup again. 'You should make your own soup', I hear you say, and quite often we do. But sometimes, quite a lot of times, it is so good to be able to just open the carton, heat, and serve....

Anyway, that was Sunday night's supper. We have recovered somewhat.

Monday felt like quite a dead day, but we slogged through - he slogged through, is perhaps closer to the truth - and the curtains are up. The dreary creamy beige cheap and cheerful M and S curtains, bought for the sitting room of the house we left in 1983, are GONE. In their place we have 'The Strawberry Thief'

I wanted to put the Christmas tree up, but was persuaded to delay by another day and wait for delivery of Christmas lights to go in the window which were to arrive today. But are arriving tomorrow. The Christmas Tree is down, in that girt great four-fifths destroyed remnant of a cardboard box on the mat,

but not up, and won't be until tomorrow, or even Thursday. I am disappointed; I had high hopes of the tree being up extra early this year, but every step of replacing the curtains and curtain rail has been a series of battles, a campaign waged over several years, with rotten curtains (literally), long past its usefulness curtain track, and proper bodged mounting arrangements for said cheap useless track. Looked at in that way a day or two, a week or two, isn't much of a delay. 

Cat and I spent a pleasant morning tucked up in bed today (and every morning)

 me warm and cosy under the duvet, and she warm and cosy under a quilt. We do all right, us two.

Yesterday I 'did' my second ever on-line music exam, where I 'act' the role of the examiner in guiding the candidate through the process (pieces, scales, aural tests, technical exercises). The whole thing is recorded and sent off to the examining body for marking. After the sleepless night I was quite grateful for the Advent calendar tea;

I drank two cups of it beforehand, but I don't think it was powerful enough. We did get through everything, but some bits happened in the wrong order (like announcing the name of the candidate, instrument and grade before you start - I remembered that after a while). I expect (hope) the examiners are used to dippy teachers - after all, don't we all have a 'creative' and 'artistic' temperament, our minds floating high and free above such mundane things as admin?

This is what I've got for today, and now seems like a good time to drink it as there is a possibility that I might be perpetrating another zoom exam later this afternoon...

 

Sunday 13th December - Advent at Home 3

 This post is part of the 'Advent at Home' group, hosted by Angela Almond at Tracing Rainbows 

The theme for this coming week in my Advent book is 'Journeying' (the first theme was 'waiting', the second was 'accepting')

and today's poem by R S Thomas is 'Wrong?' I need to maybe apologise if this looks more like an analysis of a poem; I never studied poetry at school, so this is all a new exploration for me!

Wrong?

Where is that place apart
you summon us to? Noisily
we seek it and have no time
to stay. Stars are distant;
is it more distant still,
out in the dark in the shadow
of thought itself? No wonder
it recedes as we calculate
its proximity in light years.

Maybe we were mistaken
at the beginning or took later
a wrong turning. In curved space
one can travel for ever and not recognise
one’s arrivals. I feel rather
you are at our shoulder, whispering
of the still pool we could sit down
by; of the tree of quietness
that is at hand; cautioning us
to prepare not for the breathless journeys
into confusion, but for the stepping
aside through the invisible
veil that is about us into a state
not place of innocence and delight.

I am still trying to work out how R S Thomas shapes his sentences into a poem. It definitely reads differently to me according to which format I read. 

As prose, the sentences arranged into two paragraphs, the word orders are 'odd', the sudden changes of 'topic' are disorientating and it is harder to get to the meaning of each sentence. 

As separate sentences, the words lose meaning and power. Each sentence seemed fairly ordinary, until I reached the last one, which sprawls over ten lines, pausing at four commas and semi-colons (and a couple more would be helpful!). Each pause gave me time to create a picture, of the still pool I could sit by, the tree of quietness I could share space with, and then the headlong rush of words to finish with after the phrase 'breathless journeys into confusion'. 

Is this the message of Advent... that breathless hurry to get ready for Christmas will sabotage any hope of reaching that state, not place, of innocence and delight?

And would I have discovered this message if I had not paused by the still pool and the tree of quiet in my journey through the poem instead of reading at my usual pace of hurry?

Saturday 12th December

 Cake update

I went to make it, and discovered that I have just a handful of raisins left. So it will have to wait until the next Waitrose delivery on Friday.

Today's teabag was tropical, and very pleasant

I drank it after lunch - a rather eclectic mixture of drinkables and eatables; espresso coffee, whisky cake, and tropical tea which I consumed in that order.

 

I was feeling chilled, and thought I would wrap myself in the crochet blanket, or the thick fleece jacket, but the cat had already had the same idea and beaten me to it. Oh well. There's always another blanket somewhere. 

 

Friday 11th December 2020

Quick update on my father - he's back in his flat now, with carers  helping him (too much,' he says, but that sounds ok to me - better too much than too little at this stage. 

**************************************************************

I'm a bit of a disappointment to myself about doing things every day - even brushing my teeth twice a day seems like an imposition on my personal freedom to do what I like when I like.

Himself described it perfectly just now when he said 'I do these things in waves', and that is so true.

Currently, as well as brushing my teeth, I have the following daily events scheduled;

reading the relevant pages in my prayer book - on the whole that is going well, and has been for about 5 months

reading a Psalm - I have been working backwards through the Psalms in the little white Book of Common Prayer that my godfather gave me when I was Confirmed - I am so loving the unexpected use of the English language. I haven't read today's Psalm no 29, because the rhythm of the morning has been interrupted and I am downstairs already - I usually read it, along with the prayer book, before I get up.

Eating my Advent  chocolate every day - that's neither a problem nor an imposition! This usually happens in the evening, but can take place after lunch if the morning has been particularly trying

Drinking the Advent tea. I'm a couple behind, and I think I've lost one before I could drink it. I don't think today's tea is likely to be consumed - I might pour boiling water on it and take a cautious sip, but

chocolate, coconut and green tea? Do they sound like flavours that should be put into the same cup all at the same time?

I am equally unconvinced by gingerbread and green tea. So these two may remain in the pending pile for a few days until I am feeling more courageous

These three look more likely to me.

The last mincemeat fruit cake I made was a bit dry. I hated to admit it, but it is undeniable. So I added some whisky. Rather a lot of whisky, and the cake is moist now. Saturated. When you lifted the lid off the tin the fumes were enough to make you step back; it is better now that I've left the lid off the tin for a couple of hours yesterday and the day before, and now the cake is no longer wringing wet and you can open the tin without going instantly over the safe driving limit. I've just had a piece now, and it is still very alcoholic but I think I should be ok to teach a piano lesson in four hour's time.

I'm fascinated by this recipe for a three-ingredient-christmas-cake;

Mixed fruit, all-purpose (plain) flour and .... iced coffee? Would it work with gingerbread tea, or chocolate and coconut tea? There are 66 five star ratings on the website. Shall I? Dare I?

 Hey, but I'm off topic - I was wining about all these self-imposed daily tasks I have loaded myself with. Oh, they can all go to blazes, the Advent poem, the daily writing prompt, the daily drawing practice, piano practice, the Advent candle on the mantlepiece, the candle in the lantern outside the front door in the evening - I'm off to see what happens when I stir up dried fruit, tea (not iced coffee - but might add some treacle for darkness and sweetness) and flour together and bake it in the air fryer. If it doesn't work I'll just drown it in whisky.    

 

 

Sunday 6th December

 So little to do, so much time to do it in

can rapidly turn into a frantic struggle to finish things in time!

I'm still dealing with endless emails regarding my father's state of health; every so often there's someone else who should have been told. You'd think I had a stock of carefully crafted phrases by now, but it isn't quite like that. It all depends on how well I know someone, or how well they know my father, and also whether the recipient is English or French or Dutch or whatever and how good I think their English is likely to be.

Anyway, the news today is - no change. Home day is still set for early this week; he said 'Tuesday' on the phone this afternoon.

We - that is me, off-springs 1 and 2, and Best Beloved telephoned from the South Coast where we met up this afternoon to hand over Christmas and Stocking presents (yes, I know they are grownups) and chocolate and mince pies (still warm, only just baked in time)

I'll swear that the sticky tape was still bonding to the paper; wrapping presents, baking mince pies and and getting ready to go out was all accomplished in 45 minutes.

The sea was slatey blue-grey, the sky was pearly blue-grey, the sun was bright... and the wind was Fresh! We didn't hang around long but it was worth the trip just to see them (Awww).

Today's Tea bag?

Mint, apple, pear, and nettle? No. One sip restored my vitality enough to take it back to the kitchen and find something else.

Poem? I've already blogged on it.

Advent ring?

Here you are - all ivory candles because hat is what I had. Some more were delivered yesterday - red, cream and ivory. Apparently there should be three purple ones, a pink one and a white one in the centre. I'll get my felt-tips out.

 

The mat looks strange because it is upside down to be used for marking out the shape of the new curtain rail - you can tell by the trays of bits and pieces and so on set out nearby that Work is in Progress.

Sunday 6th December - Advent - at Home

 I'm joining in with Angela Almond's Annual Advent (whoa, all those 'A's!) blog round robin; you can find the other contributers at her website here

I'm also a member of an Advent Book Club on facebook which is reading 'Frequencies of God - walking through Advent with R S Thomas', by Carys Walsh.

Last week's poems were all on the theme of 'waiting' - waiting for something to happen.

Thinking about it, this has been what quite a lot of this year has been about - waiting... Now a vaccine has arrived on the scene and we are now all

still waiting

because it is going to take time for everyone to be offered the vaccine, and then there's still working out how to live 'with' covid19.

This week's theme is 'accepting'.  I don't know how that will be developed through the poems Carys Walsh has selected.

I do know that 'accepting' is a large part of what we need to consider in this run-up to Christmas.

Two thoughts came to mind; accepting limitations and restrictions and changes to family traditions, and accepting gifts, however large, however small, however mystifying, however unexpected. Small gifts, of surprises, thoughts, sunlight, telephone calls, are easily within our powers to give and receive. 

Today's poem to begin the theme is 

Amen

And God said, How do you know?

And I went out into the fields

At morning and it was true.

Nothing denied it, neither the bowed man

On his knees, nor the animals,

Not the birds notched on the sky's

Surface. His heart was broken 

Far back, and the beasts yawned

Their boredom. Under the song

Of the larks, I heard the wheels turn

Rustily. But the scene held;

The cold landscape returned my stare;

There was no answer. Accept; accept.

And under the green capitals,

The molecules and the blood's virus. 

Typing it out now is literally the first time I have read the words. There's a lot of thinking to be done here... asking the questions, and accepting the answers.... 

   

Saturday 5th December

 Missed a post yesterday... both of us are feeling a bit 'slow' after the past few days. We keep yawning, massive, face-stretching yawns - he does one, and then me, and then him, and then me...

There was a time when my jaw was prone to get stuck wide open - it happened in Great Yarmouth when I was about eleven, and I had to walk around the town for the rest of the afternoon feeling like a complete idiot until it clicked and I was able to close it. And in a 6th form maths lesson. Vectors, as I remember. How I hated applied maths.

Teas; yesterday was 'calm', which in the circumstances was entirely appropriate. I have no idea if it worked.

I found the tea in my advent calendar after a particularly tricky phone call; someone called me in considerable distress after being cut-off phoning my father - the telephones at the hospital tend to do that. I remember that one person used to phone every evening for news when my mother was nearing the end of her life, and after I had put the phone down I would go to the kitchen and eat pickled gherkins, as a way of dealing with the pent-up impatience I felt. (We solved that one by me never answering the phone in the evenings... he would get a brief message from Best Beloved instead)

Anyway, there is continuing good news re my father as far as returning to his flat is concerned, and being back in is own home will make all the difference. He is saying 'Monday' in tones of great decisiveness, we are saying 'well, looks like it will be sometime next week...' in more neutral tones.

Today's tea; Jasmine Tea   

I made a pot, and then decided to have coffee instead, to go with my Advent chocolate.

I've been indulging in procrastination big time - having taught three piano lesson this morning I couldn't bring myself to write up and send the notes, so made Air Fryer chocolate chip cookies (YES!!!). I cooked three and have frozen the the other twelve for laters. Glad I did, because if I had cooked them I would have eaten them.

I also made another faux Christmas Cake - I think I am nearly there with the recipe. I just need to adjust temperature and timing. BB said he thought it might be slightly dry - I think I may just solve that problem by pouring some of his whisky inot it.

The poems for yesterday and today were Suddenly - same title as the last one, but written later. This photograph (snitched from twtr) misses out all the line spacings.

Very different to the other poem with the same title.

Today's poem is Sea-Watching; someone has put it on their blog here  If you happen to go and have a look you will see what I mean about line spacings. Sea-watching took me straight back to staying in Falmouth, sitting upstairs looking out over the Fal estuary towards St Mawes and beyond, not thinking of anything, just looking at the sea and the sky...

Aplogoes for typos. It's bedtime.
   

Wednesday 3rd December

 Today's chocolate was eaten at lunchtime - it was that kind of morning.

When we opened the curtains it was still black night; all I could see was the streetlight outside the bedroom window, with occasional streaks of gold when raindrops fell from the lamp to the ground leaving a trail like a shooting star.

Rain is what it did, all day, and I don't think I have felt properly warm until now; this computer is right by a radiator! 

Today's tea;

Matcha green tea - okay - with cranberry and lime - less okay. I didn't notice the manganese making much contribution to my energy, metabolism or well-being, but I guess a rainy November day is a tough challenge for any cup of tea.

Still, tea is in many ways a symbol more than a drink - a glass teapot with a fancy tea and a glass mug on a tray with a tray cloth mean 'taking time for me'. So, as an experience, it was still good.

I had another routine hospital cardiology appointment over zoom today. I enjoy meeting the consultants - they are a cheerful, amusing and straight talking bunch. We came to the conclusion that I'm still alive - no, I should be serious! I'm pretty much unchanged from the beginning of this year, or indeed from last year. He was pondering what to say in the letter that gets sent to the other clinics and the GP - I suggested he just change the dates and send the same one, but he thought that might be unprofessional. 

I then phoned the hospital to see how my father is doing, and to garner news for an email out to friends and family; so far, so good. He's very cheerful, instructed me to inform everyone that he was going to go back to his flat next week for palliative care. With cancer, and at his age, it is anyone's guess how long things can carry on, but we are thinking in terms of months, not years.

The astonishing, and wonderful, and comforting about this whole state of affairs is how positive he is at the moment; while accepting the diagnosis and likely prognosis, he is managing to stay upbeat rather than sink into doom and gloom. At least when he is on the phone to me.

Today's pictures; - if I do two or three a day I should slowly catch up on the half dozen blank pages in my sketch book;

I've been prepping some pages by swooshing paint over them like this;

and then seeing what kind of pictures emerge; (the backgrounds are not the same as the ones above)

like the animal head

or a memory of the yellow flowers that shone in the border back in Jull and August 

or the ships sailing up and down the waves in a wild sunset; I member my grandmother saying, on the subject of bringing up your children, 'when you build your ships you must let them sail' 

 

Today's Advent poem; Suddenly by RS Thomas

As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.

Oddly enough, I have copied this from a web page which in which this poem was used as an Easter reflection. The last seven lines, of course. It is less obviously an Advent poem, but the these of this week's reflections is 'waiting'.

This is what I posted on the Reading Group facebook page;

There are times when, for apparently no reason at all, with no warning, I suddenly feel completely happy, joyful, content.

Is it because of something I've just seen, or heard, or done, or made?

No, it comes unannounced, not because of anything, but as a gift, and affirmation, and as soon as I have realised what is happening, it seems to smile and move on (to the next person?) leaving me with the smile, and feeling gently completed.

There are times when, for apparently no reason at all, with no warning, I suddenly feel completely happy, joyful, content.

Is it because of something I've just seen, or heard, or done, or made?

No, it comes unannounced, not because of anything, but as a gift, and affirmation, and as soon as I have realised what is happening, it seems to smile and move on (to the next person?) leaving me with the smile, and feeling gently completed.