Sunday 29th August - Walking and walking and walking

Every day since Monday I have been out walking around the streets nearby. I have a new gadget - I keep calling it a 'fitbit' but that's like calling your Miele vacuum cleaner a Hoover. It's a Garmin something or other, all connected up to my mobile phone by some kind of telepathy.

In some ways it is a ridiculous extravagance, and in others a brilliant purchase, as I am very motivated now to clock up the steps and go out for a walk - oh I'm bored, I'll just walk a little way up the road and take my mind off that packet of crisps which keeps singing out 'eat me, eat mee' 

I set low goals to begin with - 2000 steps, and increased it little by little to 3500. I'm moving up to 4000 this week!

It also measures heart rate, and attempts to measure Oxygen sats but that last seems very optimistic - I will be gasping like a landed fish, and the finger monitor say 77% (which is very very low!) and the wrist band reads 92%. No, I don't think so!

The point is though, walking everyday has completely revitalised me - I feel less 'bleah', no longer stuck in a sort of foggy misty doldrum. I've also been focusing on how I breathe, as the oxygen machine is only effective if I breathe through my nose.

 

We've done tests over the same route - me on my own, me carrying the oxygen machine, me with Best Beloved carrying the machine, and I've been keeping records. It is abundantly clear to me that I am improving in how far I can go, with and without the machine, in just one week. So exciting!

What else...

I have the most perfect morning schedule going at the moment; first of all a tray with breakfast and my mobile phone arrives; 

and I look through the news on my phone while listening to BBC Radio 3. 

Then I do the Bible reading for the day - don't know how long that will last - I have a track record going back many decades of starting a 'daily this' or 'daily that' and giving it up after a couple of months. It does give me an opportunity to ponder and pray for things - family, church, and the unimaginable disaster in Afghanistan, and not only Afghanistan but in other areas of the world. I am astonished that people are still behaving like barbarians everywhere in the world - well, no, I'm not astonished. Just deeply, deeply sad. A mixture of prayer, and donating to various organisations, is all I can offer. Today's reading were a Psalm, and a couple of chapters of Ecclesiastes which kind of summed things up. 

.............

Then I do a quick drawing. Here is the view out of the bedroom window of the birds gathering on the TV aerials for their morning briefing. 

At some stage the cat will join me; 

And then I will get up. This is a great start to the day!

I've finished knitting the greeny-blue vest, or sleeveless top, or slipover, or whatever it is going to turn into, and yesterday I cut and sewed the armhole steek on one side. I have practiced steeks on the teacosies, and also on a swatch of the sleeveless top, so I felt fairly confident.

I did two lines of sewing either side of the cutting line (marked in white) 

Then came the scary part; this wool is a lot more unravel-ry than proper shetland wool.

sewing down the cut edged was finicky work, so I paused in the middle for a mini croissant or two

Sewing and croissants were finished at about the same time.

    

It's looking pretty good. I am waiting for the exact combination of time, mood, light and inclination to all come together to tackle the other armhole. Then I have to do something about the weird bits around the neck where some stitches have become very loose, and it is all finished. No seaming, as I did a clever 3-needle bind-off for the shoulder seams. Hooray!

Lastly, I've been living dangerously by doing some watercolour thumbnails while sitting on the sofa;

 I'm using a waterbrush rather than pot of water which keeps things slightly under control!

Now, it's time to assemble a pot of tea...

Friday 20th - Thursday 26th August - And Breathe...

I'm definitely going to have to learn Italian. We are watching all the episodes of Montalbano, and Young Montalbano, from the beginning - how have we missed these until now? We ration ourselves to one at lunchtime, and maybe another in the late afternoon or early evening if we NEEEEEED a distraction because it is too hot, or too wet, or we are just too bleah to consider any other activity.

Picture from www.sicilytourguides.net

Picture from discoveringscicily.com

We watch it for the stories, the characters, and above all, the scenery. The dialogue is all in Italian, with English subtitles, and the sound of the language, especially when Commissar Salvo Montalbano gets worked up about something is wonderful to hear.

After watching an episode I have to resist the urge to reply 'Certo' in the same tone of voice, instead of 'sure' or 'okay' or 'fine'.

This past week I have been reining myself in from giving way to full-throttled frustrazione e furia as I battled my way through labyrinthine switchboards and websites to deal with problems with the supply of an essential medication (sorted - a prescription had got 'lost' somehow, and stayed 'lost' in spite of arranging for it to be redelivered). Also a complete farce with appointments at one of the London hospitals which decided I MUST come in for routine face-2-face tests and appointments, no, I didn't need to, yes I did after all, and could I come up three days in advance for a PCR test... Oh my word. I think this is sorted, forse; one more phone call to check whether the letter cancelling a 12 o'clock appointment or the one booking me in for a 12 o'clock appointment (what happened to the 11.10 appointment then?) is the real one. And I am now the local expert on where and how and when you can get PCR test appointments locally, rather than visiting the hospital three days in advance.

Going up to London seems such a big thing - I have been quite distracted by the idea - not in the least because I had a blood test recently so check on my Covid antibodies level. Result; 'non detected'.

A friend has offered to drive us in her camper van! Providing us with somewhere to eat, a personal loo, and a rescue from travelling up by train and bus/two tubes or taxi. A friend indeed - it's at least a two-hour journey by car, with no certainty of where to park when you get there. Driving back after Lung Function tests, a Rheumatology consultation and a Cardiology consultation - all tiring in their own way - would have been really exhausting. Che grande amica!

Has this been all my life since last Friday? Well, pretty much so. I have come completely unravelled a couple of times (there was also an appointment on Friday 20th at a local hospital to investigate what, if any, portable oxygen supply I need for walking around, but more on that another time). Somehow, at each crucial moment, something has happened to stave off total collapse - a friend and colleague turning up with a pot of flowers; 

  The first blooms on a dark blue buddleia that I asked another friend to get for me 

and these utterly charming metal birds appearing on the top of the fence between us and our neighbours

The sight of any one of these, and many other things that have come my way over; a chunk of a Psalm,  verse of a hymn, and even this whacky chorus from a children's song about praying to God when things are getting heavy. 

This prayer thing. Seems to work pretty well, I've found. Even when my prayer seems to come out all 'AAAAAARRRGGGHHHH' skipping out all the Thee, Thine, Thy and Thou bits and getting straight to the point.

And Breathe.... 

Tuesday 17th August - One day follows another

I could share my news with you - if there was any news...

I guess the news on TV, especially re Afghanistan, is enough for now. There are various aid agencies trying to get some kind of help in - Oxfam, 

Here are a couple of suggestions lifted from Twitter;

  

Also how to pray for the situation? What to pray for? I found this a good read; I follow the www.ibenedictines.org blog, and here is today's post;

https://www.ibenedictines.org/2021/08/16/how-do-we-pray-about-afghanistan/

Dame Catherine writes a good deal of sense.

So that's that part of today's blog...

Otherwise my days follow themselves one after another. This is the week I am starting to get my act together regarding preparing for the term ahead - I know it is still August, but early in September I will start teaching those Grade 8 students and I ought to be able to play the scales even if I can't manage all of the pieces! Today I made a start on re-learning the Debussy Arabesque no 1 which I used to be able to play, and hopefully will soon be able to again.

I'm still knitting;

 wristlets this time. These come from a book called 'weekend knitting', and indeed I knitted two pairs over the weekend. I started because Best Beloved commented on how cold my hands were - in August!

In the process I have learned to do 'wrap and turn short rows'  to create the shaping. If you look carefully across the palm, you will spot two places where a ridge of knitting branches into two ridges halfway along, to give the extra width for the hand. There's clever, boyo. When it came to finishing, you pickup stitches along the first row onto a spare needle, and then knit them together in pairs with the ending, so you have to wrangle three needles at the same time. A bit fiddly, but then it means that you have knitted the edges together so that you don't have to sew them together. 

Why two pairs? The first pair were an exact fit, so I made another pair on slightly larger needles. Perfect.

I almost can't wait for Autumn because I am so pleased with them, and judging by the weather at the moment I won't have long to wait.

I'm going back through the 'Learn to Draw in 30 Days' book. It is pleasing to compare the first time and the second time I do each lesson.

I could see the point of the skills in this lesson, first time around, but thought that the picture of a rose, which is a decent version of what the book shows you to do, was horrible, so false, so stiff. 

This time around, I had a brain wave, and starting with the stiff, artificial spiral drawn very faintly, I loosened up all the lines and was rather pleased with the result. 

Tuesday 10th August - The first adventure -

 There are a whole series of 'adventures' approaching - overdue eye tests, overdue face-to-face clinic appointments locally and up in London; it seems I was premature when I rejoiced at all my appointments being via zoom. I have bought a couple of packets of those extra-protective face masks that make you look like a close relative of a duck-billed-platypus in readiness.

We wore ordinary masks for this afternoon's adventure - taking the cats to the vet. It was a mixture of annual check up (overdue by a year) and also see if we were running into trouble with McCavity's teeth. Leo had to have 6 teeth out in the Summer of 2019...

The system is that you have a chat with the vet standing outside the surgery, hand over the cat basket, wait outside, and then they reappear with the cats and the bill. Here we all are, waiting for dogs and cats and whatever... good job it was sunny...

In our case the consultation was 'relatively' cheap; 

there isn't much point vaccinating them at their age if they are not going into a cattery or living in a cat-infested environment, 

their teeth have a build up of plaque but the gums aren't inflamed - yet - and at their age doing the dental work would be a bit of a risk, and also there's more than a chance that they won't live long enough (they are 19 years old) for the plaque to become a problem

they don't seem to have any suspicious lumps and bumps that can be felt.

They are a bit thin and light-weight - but that's to be expected.

So, the first 'adventure' is complete. Apart from having a bit of difficulty in cramming both cats into the one container 'Leo is a bit grumpy, isn't she' they remarked, handing them back it was all a non-event. For us, maybe not so much for the cats.

In other 'news' - there isn't any news from here really - I have managed to persuade my 'Tea for Two' coffee and tea maker to burst into life after a few false starts when I couldn't remember exactly where the water goes.

This all happened because my bedside light started flickering. Everything is plugged into an extension strip under my side of the bed, so great dismantlings had to happen at about 10pm in order to get at the plug which is also a transformer. The pillows have to be removed, the mattress lifted over the foot of the bed, and muscle-wrenching contortions attempted in order to unplug the now HOT power pack. Then everything put back before we can actually go to sleep.

I'm keeping myself sane by playing Bach, and copying youtube watercolour tutorials into my teeny tiny book

Sunday 8th August - Autumn

 No really. And knowing that the first day of Autumn in the medieval calendar is 7th August, makes me feel a whole lot better about putting on socks and shoes instead of going barefoot, and wearing a scarf, or, today, a fleece.

It makes sense - Harvest is an 'Autumn' sort of thing, and really gets going in August.

All my good resolutions about going for walks have been washed away in the rain this past week. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. I've walked round the garden and eaten a couple of runner beans from the top of the plants, having carefully inspected them for slug trails and wildlife first.

We seem to have sorted out the cat's problems to some extent. My little water feature was unceremoniously emptied out into the thick laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden, water, algae, rocks, sticky water and all. We suspect that it may have been the source of the parasites that McCavity has been harbouring. And we have bought some dry biscuit food called 'Meowing Heads' to supplement they ordinary cat food. 

I've been getting used to my new sketchbook. I watch tutorials on youtube (they have to be short, and I have to like the sound of the voice over)

Having watched 'how to draw trees in pen and ink' I had a go at following the same general idea in coloured pencil and watercolour. It's all practice for when we go on holiday.

Holiday? Where? When? Oh, somewhere, sometime, in the future...

Thursday 5th August - Oh, just this and that...

 I've been meaning to write a blog post for a few days, and then I just... oh, something distracts me on the way to the computer, or once I have arrived at the computer - you know how it goes.

I admire people who post every day. But then, when they don't post for a day or two, I worry about them, especially older one lady who has been feeling under the weather. I have a couple of months - like November - when I do a 'post every day for a month' challenge. 

This isn't one of those months!

So, anyway, here's a selection of snippets... 

Number 1 Son did a rare blog post recently entitled 'Computer Specs'. I read on, to see if he had gone to the opticians (I need to go) and come back with glasses for working on the computer - it seemed a possibility in his line of work. But n, it was all full of letters and numbers relating to the thingy whatsits that we was replacing in his current home computer. I read through in vain to find a complete sentence that made any kind of sense to me - the gist is, he is happy rebuilding his computer. Good.

I ordered a new sketchbook for August - it was a bit disappointing that delivery wouldn't be until 2nd August, but never mind - what's a day or two? It was even more disappointing that I had clearly gone into one of my 'for heaven's sake just pick one' moods after going round in circles examining all the options and sizes available, and  ended up with something that is considerably smaller than I had planned.

Lovely quality paper; it is perfect in every other respect! It is made by Stillman and Birn, their zeta series. Once I had recalibrated my expectations, I made a start; doing two days at a time in order to catch up. An imaginary picture of 'Black Rabbit Hall' using 1-point perspective as explained in the 'Learn to draw in 30 days' book by Mark Kistler  

 

and tracings of 'The Virgin of the Rocks' by Leonardo Da Vinci', for 2nd August. This is an exercise from the same book, for learning to draw faces.

I have been immensely impressed with this 'How to Draw' book - suddenly I find myself drawing in a way I never managed before. I finished the book today, and sent off for the next one in the series called something like 'Draw this in 30 minutes'.

The advantage of such a small sketchbook is that it is very easy to fill a page...

Now I have to deal with the 3rd and 4th of August, and then tomorrow the 5th and 6th? I wonder how long it will take me to catch up with myself...

The book club managed an outdoor meet up, for a cream tea, in someone's garden, on Tuesday. About 6 of us, no, exactly 6 or us - we were all complete with no bits or pieces left at home.

quotation alert

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least — at least I mean what I say — that's the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter.

BB and I watched a programme about the V and A - how I look forward to going back there - with a segment on the current Alice in Wonderland exhibition, particularly the famous tea-party.

Although our tea party didn't reach the heights of chaos as this one. They showed - that is, on the V and A programme, are you still following me? - a clip from the Jonathon Miller film which I had never come across. Now I NEEEED to try and find a recording to watch! They used to show us the Disney 'Alice' as a 'treat' at prep school on Mother Superior's Feast Day; it terrified me every time, but there was no escaping the 'treat'. Alice or Bambi. Ugh. 

Oh yes, the book club. Well, the last book was Sara Dinsmore's 'Darkness in Zennor', set in the time of World War 1 when DH Lawrence and his German wife were living in Zennor. Good, but not 'happy'. This month's book is 'Precious Bane' by Mary Webb, which I got hopelessly mixed up in my mind with Thomas Hardy's novels (none of which I've read. It just sounds like a Thomas Hardy book, I suppose).

The only other thing of note is that I drove to the meeting. By myself. In the car. There and back, without mishap or alarm. That's the first time I have driven the car since May 2020 - there has been no need drive anywhere before as BB did all the driving.