Friday 30th July - Falling asleep

 I regularly have what I call 'non-sleeping' nights. Generally I put on my 'cozy-phones'

and listen to a talking book, or the radio. This hasn't been working recently - I blame my choice of books. I set the sleep timer for 30 minutes, and then, because the story is holding my attention, set it for another 30, and maybe even another 30... I was listening to 'The October Man', a Rivers of London book by Ben Aaronvitch, and now I'm three-quarters of the was through 'The Lighthouse' by P D James.

I need to choose something more soporific...

I have tried various breathing methods; in for a count of four, hold for a count of 4, out for a count of four, wait for a count of four... I manage one, maybe two 'circuits' and then I need to do some ordinary breathing again. Or in for four, hold for seven, out for eight and repeat... nope. I can't keep this going without running out of breath.

Last night I tried the US Airforce pilot training method and it worked! I read about it on the internet, and managed to find it in this article along with a whole load of other ideas.

Summarised;

1 relax your face, mouth, eyes

2 relax your chest, arms, hands

3 relax your legs, feet

4 Clear your mind, and imagine a relaxing scene. A couple of suggestions are 'lying in a canoe, looking up at a completely clear blue sky', or lying in a black velvet hammock in a pitch back room'

5 If this doesn't work, say 'don't think, don't think' over and over to yourself.

This should work within 10 seconds (or so!)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Blue_sky_with_wisps_of_cloud_on_a_clear_summer_morning.jpg

Whether it will work two nights in a row is another matter.

Tuesday 27th July - Nearly everything on the list...

 I'm back to playing my Roland digital harpsichord again - it's probably been gathering dust for nearly a year, but what with one thing and another I haven't been playing the piano or anything much. Until I drastically cut down on the teaching back in March last year, I was hardly doing any playing in the evenings and weekends, although I usually did a ' piano project' over the Summer holidays.

this isn't me!

This Summer's project is to try and play some Bach - starting with the Partita in B flat and the Goldberg Variations. I'm not aiming for any great mastery of the Variations - but if I manage get hack my way through each one I shall be very pleased. I'm making more of an effort with the Partita. 

The drawing book - 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days or Less' - continues to astonish me! The last two lessons were on single point perspective - not something I've ever bothered too much about before.

Yesterday's was on how to draw a room;

and today's was drawing a street;

I'm up to lesson 23. Tomorrow I tackle 2-point perspective....

I just follow the instructions, and out pops a picture - how does that work?

Also  a painting - I saw some leaves against an evening sky for just a couple of second on television the other evening, so I did the background one day, the leaves the next, and today added some lines using a pen that has brown sparkly ink.

 The sparkles don't show up much...

The two knitted pot-holders went through the washing machine at 40 degrees as instructed at the end of the knitting pattern, and came out completely felted. The larger one is using the pattern, but I suspect that somewhere along the way things went astray because it is meant to be flat. I made a simplified version for the smaller one. They do look amazing - I shall make some more!

Finally, I am gradually typing up poems written by my grandmother when she was young - they are from around 1910 - 1920. The idea is to collect them into a booklet so that anyone in the family who is interested can have them. (I knew there was some purpose to learning to type at the beginning of this year!). There is a whole box full of her poems, memories, talks to the Mothers Union, stories...

At the moment I am working through an envelope labelled 'Youthful Poems'. At first I found the writing quite tricky, but I am beginning to 'get my eye in'.

Nearly everything on the list, I said - no hoovering, cleaning, tidying, you notice...

Sunday 25th July - Cowering? Per-lease.

 I don't normally go off on a rant, at least, not on this blog, but our latest Health Minister, Sajid Javid, tweeted this yesterday evening;

 I have been tipped over the edge by the use of the word 'cower'. 

I can only assume that in his euphoria about recovering so quickly (in a week - wow!) he has forgotten about all the people - 'his people' - in the sense that he is the one who is supposed to be working to ensure provision of health facilities for everyone - who are still remaining at home for very good reasons.

It is not fear that stops me from socialising, going on holiday or to cafes, shops, theatres. It is the knowledge that I, and many, many others, will almost certainly not be able to 'live' with the virus. 

I bitterly resent the idea that I am 'cowering' from this virus. Like others taking immune suppressant medicines, I am aware that the 'amazing vaccines' probably won't be effective. Like the many, many others with respiratory conditions, I am fairly certain that I do not have the capacity to survive a virus which has such a devastating effect one's ability to breathe.

To describe people who cannot 'live with' this virus as cowards is thoughtless in the extreme.

Ok. Deep breath and see if I can raise my oxygen sats to about 92% - they always drop to about 86% when I get into a strop (normal for healthy people is about 97% or more).

Let's just put this tweet down to careless choice of words, and he's trying to be encouraging and a bit robust - wanting everyone to get out there and back to 'normal' and start rebuilding the economy. 

Sure, but when you have risen to the dizzy heights of the most senior positions in the government of what's left of this country, you should know that you have to think carefully about your choice of words before tweeting to the world. Maybe he still has some Covid brain-fog.

Or, maybe, just maybe, he really did think long and hard and then deliberately chose to tweet those words.

I've just added a new tag to the list - 'furious'.

Saturday 24th July - Water

Woke up to thunder and rain. What a relief after the last few days. We had taken a gamble on not watering the garden last night, and this time it paid off.

Luckily it didn't last for too long - now, at the end of the day, it has become hot and sunny again.

 Sometimes I imagine what I would pack if we suddenly had to deal with imminently being flooded out; what would we salvage? For a start, we'd take the computer upstairs, and any important books and papers. 

Then collect passports (I think mine is out of date), empty my drawer of medicines into a bag, along with portable oxygen concentrator. Toothbrushes, soap, towels, shampoo (I can deal with anything as long as my hair isn't getting me down!). Cats into the cat box, and all the cat food. Scoop up the loo rolls and a tube of germolene which represents my sum total of First Aid equipment. Then food - would we have time for the little storm kettle? It might be useful. Blankets. Pillows.

 

Ah yes, and all the myriad computer and phone chargers... never forget the chargers!

still sort of on the subject of water,

Here are some splodgy watercolours; I have got hold of a thin book by Hazel Sloan called 'Learn to Paint  Watercolours Quickly' and am copying her pictures. 'You can read this book in 30 minutes,' she says, but you will be painting before you reach the end.' True.

I'm looking at her flower sketches at the moment, sloshing the colours on, letting them run together and saying ' well, that'll do,' after a minute or so. I want to use up anA4 sketchbook I started as an experiment, much larger than I have used before, and I don't think I really like it. Or do I? It might be growing on me.

I divided this page into six at the beginning of July, intending to do one square per day, but the picture I painted in the top right square was so awfully awful that I cut it out and threw it in the compost bin, which is why there's a bit of a sunflower showing in that square from the next page.

I did the poppies at the beginning of the month; paint first, following a you-tube tutorial that I half remembered. Then I went over it with a pen which turned out to have sparkly brown ink in it - yes, I'll do that again!

'Try twisting your brush to make the leaf shapes more interesting' she says.

I've got to be a bit careful if I go in for splattering when painting indoors, as the white curtains are a bit close to where I work.

They aren't meant to be 'real' flowers, just 'flowerish' flowers.

Yesterday I set up outside; this end of the garden is in the shade until around lunchtime.

 I wasn't sure how useful a ceramic hot drinks container, given to me as a 'thank-you-teacher' present was going to be, but it is brilliant - there's no risk of rinsing my paintbrush in my coffee any more!  

Friday 23rd July - The Consequence of A Disturbed Night's Sleep

 Every so often I have what I call 'a non-sleeping night'. So then I listen to the World Service, or a podcast, or a talking book, or some music. I use my mp3 player, or my Kindle Fire, and have become reasonably adept at squinting at the screen to read the text without putting my glasses on, and remembering which buttons do what.

Last night was the second one of these nights in a row.

Early this morning, at about 3.15 am, a trip to the bathroom became unavoidable. Before I went back to bed, I cautiously navigated my way, in the dark, to the spare bedroom window, dodging the clothes airer, the bathroom scales and several boxes which I knew were in the way. 

I could make out the stars, and even had the idea that I might have seen a shooting star or two, so then I tiptoed back into our bedroom, managed to find my glasses, and went down stairs, all without waking my Best Beloved from his Beauty sleep.

It was hot everywhere in the house, but once I had gone out into the back garden the air was cool, but not cold. Leo the cat came out with me, looking confused, and we sat together for about quarter of an hour, staring up at the stars, and, yes, the occasional shooting star. (MacCavity was Out)

They are a bit annoying to watch for; the skies round our way are not very dark, so it is more a case of 'knowing that you have just seen one' rather than actually watching one streak across the sky as in the photographs. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Meteors

There was one star, much bright than all the others, but tellingly it seemed to be heading directly towards the airport so I guess that was a plane pretending to be a star.

However I have spent most of today just about unable to do anything more taking than read a book, play Freecell and make cups of tea or coffee. But since the Summer Holidays have started and I won't be doing any more teaching until September, who cares! 

Thursday 22nd July - Catching up with my Commonplace Book

 I've kept a Common Place Book for a number of years. I was originally inspired by John Julius Norwich's 'Still More Christmas Crackers'

which I found in a very cheap bookshops full of 'end of run' books. I love it - full of snips and snaps, often rather intellectual, sometimes in Greek or Latin or French or Italian with the assumption that a translation was hardly necessary (google translate to the rescue). He collects all sorts of morsels; letters to country newspapers about the first cuckoo in Spring, anecdotes about various more-or-less-famous people, quotations, epitaphs from tombstones... selects the best and has them privately published as a Christmas present for his family and friends.    

Here's the sort of thing that made me laugh;

Clearly pre-dating Janet and John, Peter and Jane, Biff and Chips! All they ever did was go shopping or play in the park.

There are various published Commonplace books around. I have just downloaded a sample of Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook

Reading from a Kindle or a tablet makes it so easy to high-light a passage and email it to yourself, or to screenshot a page to copy out later. Half of me says 'why bother to copy it out? Just save it to a folder!'  But copying out is half the pleasure; a fine notebook, real fountain pen and real ink out of a bottle...

Writing the words out brings them back to life, like watering one of those strange resurrection plants that I used to by from an amazing catalogue full of  the wondrous and the weird

The wikipedia site  has a very short time lapse video of this poor brown mess reviving over three hours 

I had several weeks' worth of accumulated emails, photographs and screenshots to deal with. Here are a few pages from the current book...

 

Wednesday 21st July 2021 - Taking a line for a walk

 

Paul Klee Quotes;. 

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.

A line is a dot that went for a walk.

Battle - Gefecht
https://www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum/news/2019/object-of-the-month-gefecht-battle-by-paul-klee.html

Here's a snap-shot of the opening sequence of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from the film Fantasia 2000. The cartoonist obviously felt the same about music; 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie-TS-BitnQ

and so do I, which was why I was so pleased to see this. I love the piece, but I don't care so much for the rest of the cartoon. I have heard that Gershwin hadn't finished composing the piano part on the opening night, so made up quite a lot of it...

Knitting feels a bit the same; taking the end of a ball of wool for a walk

This is going to be a pot-holder, according to the pattern instructions and the picture. The fuschia tail is where I cast on, and then by some kind of alchemy and incantation I seem to be creating a square spiral. I'm now knitting the last couple of squares so that there will be nine in all, and then I need to wash it violently in hot soap water to make it all felt up into a felted up square. We shall see. Here's the picture on the (free!) pattern.

I have had three goes at doing the spiral one, but haven't managed to get past the fourth row yet. 

I spent this afternoon immersing myself in you-tube tutorials to sew your own tee-shirt, using a favourite old one as a pattern. You place your favourite tee-shirt, folded lengthwise, and take your pencil for a walk around the outside. Seems simple enough... and then you have to consider the stretchy neck band, and how to sew stretchy fabrics with a very basic sewing machine, 

I think I've absorbed most of the instructions, top tips, do's and don't's, one-directional and two-directional stretch etc... so maybe tomorrow I will take a pair of scissors to the skirt I bout about ten years ago but have hardly ever worn.

I want to let all the information settle before I start, so I went and took the hose for a walk, watering the garden after another baking hot day. 

Tuesday 20th July - The Hottest Day So Far?

 I thought yesterday was the hottest day of the year, but it turns out it's today.

I've had a very pleasant morning - a piano teaching friend and colleague dropped by on her way to work. She's still teaching in schools as term hasn't officially ended, but had time for a breakfast cup of tea before her first lesson at about ten.

And then another friend came round for coffee as arranged last week. 

In the Spring it is a bit irritating that the sun doesn't reach the patio near the house until very late morning. At Mid-Summer this might be around eleven. Now, in July, in this heat, I am grateful that this area was still shaded at noon, even if it was warm enough for all the chocolate chunks in our biscuits to have melted. 

I was wearing the blue dress I made earlier this year. As usual, instead of making up the next Summer dress in June while the weather was miserable, so I could wear it in July when the heatwave the tabloids have been warning us about hit, I waited for the hottest day of the year.

 So while lunch was being prepared by my wonderful husband, I set to work.

The glass in the background contains cold tea - just steep a mild teabag in water overnight, in the fridge. I use green tea or white tea, and try and buy the kind of teabags that don't contain any plastic (you can't tell just by the feel of them) so that they can go in the compost. 

I'm still having to extract the remains of all the Twinings and other teabags I threw in the compost bin a couple of years ago. It's a bit like when you eat sweetcorn - the evidence re-appears...

Anyway, I am wearing the completed dress that I started this lunchtime, having finished it, washed it by hand to remove any loose dye or coating that might have been used in the manufacturing process, and hug it out to dry. In this heat, and in a light breeze, it dried in an hour.

So, this post is in the way of being a bit of a gloat...

It is the same pattern as the other dress, but I left off the sleeves. I discovered some ancient bias binding in the bottom of the sewing drawer which simplified my life considerably! 

More Monday - I said there would be 'catch-up' posts - Drawing

 I've downloaded a book onto my Kindle called 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days'. After a break of several months I'm back in drawing mode, and just starting painting mode. 

This could possibly be due to the Summer holidays being on the horizon - as term draws to a close I find I have less and less energy and enthusiasm for anything more than endless games of Free cell as a form of mind-less mind-fullness after teaching and then writing up notes and then answering emails to do with teaching.

Anyway, this book;

absolutely seems to do what it says on the cover. I'm up to lesson 18 now. I just spend a few minutes in the morning doing whatever the day's lesson is.

Lesson 1,2 and 3 were  spheres.

The it moved on to cubes. 

As a treat we did a cuddly koala (and also texture) followed by bowls and a strange rose

Lesson 12; constructing houses

and more houses

today was contour lines, and 'Contour Kid'

I am so enjoying this! The author, Mark Kistler has the same idea about teaching as me; break things down into fool proof steps and just Do it!.

It's the hottest day of the year - don't I just know it. Clouds are building up on the horizon, the sort that suggest a thunderstorm, and torrential rain, but only if we water the garden first.

Monday 19th July - Hello, did you miss me?

 Today is the day Covid restrictions are lifted and we can all do as we please. Except where we should follow guidance. Or common sense. Or whatever is most expedient at the moment.

That's all I am going to say on the subject, as it makes absolutely no difference to me - well, us two, as if he goes out on the razzle and brings the virus home with him, then I'm up some creek or other without a paddle. I'm not sure if this situation was what we had in mind when we made out marriage vows, but then, life is full of surprises.

So, what have I been doing these past three weeks? Loads of stuff, none of it remarkable.

I'll save the little micro incidents of our daily life to pad out a whole series of blog posts...

Let's talk sour dough.

I have flushed my two jars of sour dough culture away. What a good job I didn't give them names. The problem is, that apart from the bread machine method I haven't been able to produce anything except ballistic missiles. It seems to go like this - feed the starter every day, weigh out and mix the ingredients, knead it until it looks plausible, prove overnight, bake, cool, slice, and throw away.

You also have sour dough 'discard' to use; I love sour dough crackers, but my home-made ones tasted of cardboard. The sour dough cinnamon spiced loaf tasted bland. The sour dough scones - I'll tell you what happened to the sour dough scones.

One of the cats, at the ripe old age of ancient, is not so creaky that she can't jump up onto the work surfaces if she thinks she won't get caught, and the smell of sour dough has proved to be an acceptable substitute for catmint, as far as I can tell. So she sampled the sour dough scones. We knew, because that resulted in them being rearranged from rows on the cooling rack to an untidy heap on the floor.

That was the last straw - why spend hours messing about with pale beige sludge when there is a new bakery opened up in town and friends will buy a beautiful loaf for us which we can slice and freeze.

As for That Cat, now that there is no sour dough to hunt down, she turned her attention to the empty butter dish, and was caught crouched in the sink, drinking buttery water...   

That Cat - looking as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth

1st July - Thursday - Winding up as we wind down for end of term

 Confusing metaphors - I am now winding things down as I prepare to wind up this term's teaching for the Summer Holidays... tallying up my accounts for the term, setting the students up with 'easy' and 'fun' things to do over the holidays and generally taking a relaxed approach to lessons. I've 'done' all the exams, except, possibly one, that is to say, the students have done their exams, but as they are recorded in lesson time over zoom it feels as though I have been doing them too.

I reckon the last student's exam will spill over into the end of July - but apart from him I've set an 'end of year date for July 18th and That's That.

I've removed the anti-fox poo trays, on the advice of a friend who pointed out the the vinegar would eat its way through the foil tray then instead of being 'failed-fox-deterrent' would start becoming 'efficient weedkiller'. It seems to be a good slug-killer though, there were several pickled slugs (I feel a slight pity for them) in the trays Poor foolish molluscs. 

I have an idea;  pour the rest of the vineage over the solid paving and pebbles, which are supposed to be weed-free, as combined a weedkiller and mild fox deterrent and slug destroyer. 

The foxes had better find an alternative route soon, as the package of 'Scoot' has arrived, so we are upping the level of aggression... A neighbour told us that people further down the road are FEEDING the foxes 'oh, they are so sweet, we love to watch them playing in the garden in the evening'. Grrrr.

What else? 

We've bought some new bathroom scales. Un remarkable, except this seems to have coincided with me suddenly gaining 3 pounds. The old scales were bought with Green Shield Stamps

Remember them? People are selling them on ebay! For money! Do people still collect them? Can you still get things with them? You don't have to answer but I'm not sure that I really need to know this. 

The scientific hypothesis is that the springs of the old scales have become stiffer (rusty?) with age and therefore are 'weighing light'.  

What else?

My father and my Uncle came round for lunch in the garden - the forecast that said 'rain at lunchtime' was luckily incorrect - the other forecast said 'rain later in the afternoon' which is what did happen, so we had a very pleasant time and then did not need to water the garden.

There was a strange beeping noise from the kitchen while we were sitting over our coffee; McCavity the cat (at 19 years old she is the same age as my father, if you get what I mean) was engaged n a stealth raid on the cooking trays for the fish and chips, had sampled the fruit sponge pudding and had settled her attention upon the cream pot. We have an induction hob, and she had crouched down with her paws on the control panel. The beeps were because the cooker was objecting to being instructed to heat up rings which didn't have steel pans on them. 

It's a good thing that the pans were on silicone insulating mats otherwise pans and paws may have become rather warm...  

After today I will have just two weeks of teaching and then I can look forward to going nowhere for the next six weeks. 

If I am going to have to stay home for a while longer, I am jolly lucky to be living here.