After my total confusion on the Saturday just gone, what with anticipating the change of time and everything, I thought I'd better start this week with everything straight in my mind...
Next there will be blossom - in the garden
Every time I go into the garden there is more to see. The apple tree is exploding into life, and today I saw the first forget-me-nots in flower. They had self-seeded in the concrete slab close to the compost bin. I nearly trod on them when I went to dump the potato and carrot peelings.
Travellers' Joy
We were out and about today, driving along roads I hadn't visited in more than five years. The verges were bright with leaves and flowers; willow and hawthorn for leaves. As for flowers; yellow celandine, gorse and primroses and the bright white of blackthorn, like a maghesium flare in the sun everywhere.
Where the hedges were still bare Travellers' Joy was draped over and under the branches. Strictly speaking it's the flowers that are called Travellors' Joy, and it was the seed heads, Old Man's Beard, that were decorating the hedges. Or clematis vitalbans if you like.
Music
How about 'Playful Pizzicato' by Benjamin Britten. Bursting with with energy and life, from his 'Simple Symphony'.
I managed to completely confuse myself on Saturday;
It all began to go wrong when I woke up, and thought 'what a lovely sunny start to Mothering Sunday'. I had a bit of a lie-in (because it was Mothering Sunday) and the slowly got dressed and made breakfast. As usual I read the news and some blogs on my phone, updated my current 'virtual hike' along the Jurrasic Coast
I love the views along the route, 'standing' at the top of cliffs and basking in the summer sun. I add my step count to the app every day at it moves my little marker along the path.
Then the moment arrived; I looked at the click on the bookshelf; 9am, the same as my phone, so BB must have already changed it. But, but, but, my watch also showed 9am. How could this be? Surely I hadn't changed it in my sleep?
My mother used to go downstairs and make herself toast and jam in the middle of the night in her sleep. It would only be when she saw the evidence the next morning; a plate and knife, and crumbs, the jam and the butter dish left out, that she would realise what she had done. (Unhelpful if you were trying to lose weight).
BB explained all; being only SATURDAY the clocks hadn't changed. I felt a bit disorganised all day.
The monthly tree pictures
The Great Oakat the bottom of the garden
And, taken an hour later, the little apple tree beside it.
It is just coming into leaf.
Music
A lovely little piano piece by Dvorak called Silhouette in A major, full of sunshine and spring.
This is an extract from an article in 'Seen&Unseen', a free online magazine I signed up for. I read it over breakfast today;
..."When I look at the world, I feel like we’re in a football match with no referee. I keep shouting foul and looking for someone to blow the whistle. It feels like the Tower of Babel. Even the technologies we thought would unify us have made us incomprehensible to one another.
... We don’t need any more opinions. We certainly don’t need any more people with misplaced certainty they have the answer...
...To be honest, I’ve just run out of ideas. I’m confused, baffled, clueless. But what embarrasses me most is not my helplessness, it’s my hope. For some reason, in jarring contrast to the circumstances, I can’t shake off the sense that ultimately all this will make sense, that breakdowns lead to breakthroughs.
We’re in the unbearable part of the story where everything goes wrong, but if we put the book down now, we’ll think that was the end of it, when it was really just the set up..."
He goes on, using the story of the jazz pianist Keith Garrett at the now legendary1 Köln Concert 50 years ago, and the Bible story of Job, to explain why he has this hope, and how it sustains him in this scary and uncertain world we find ourselves in.
I do commend this article to you; it's a longish read, but worth the time.
Music
A random extract from the Köln Concert recording, obviously!
Neither of us had much energy today. I taught a chatty piano lesson in the morning; this student is also a good friend so we always have a good time. But apart from that I did very little.
Sewing
I have made quite a lot of progress doing the last bit of this month's stitching on the Collaboration Cover Story. I'm hoping to post it before the end of the month; oh, hang on, that's Monday! Ang has already posted hers to me and it should drop through the letterbox box in the next day or so.
Gardening
Yesterday's Lent reflection email referred to this poem;
Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
The series is following the book 'Mister God this is Anna' by Flynn, and we've reached the passage where Anna starts getting interested in growing wild flowers, collecting seeds and sowing them in the dusty yard of the East end of London where she lives.
The garden is bursting with spring flowers now, everywhere I look. I should be out there sowing vegetable seeds and planting out my potatoes, and I will be very soon. We've had some busy weeks though, and I'm not chivvying myself at the moment.
Music
This is such a well-known piece, Aquarium from the Carnival of the Animals, and pretty much describes how I am today.
"This term, dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to the heavy charge of powder or lead that hunters use for large animals like a bear" from the internet
We've used the phrase for years in our household to mean "ready and prepared for every eventuality"
as when I was a peripatetic primary school class instrumental music teacher, and used to load up my car with a selection from
a djembe and a repinique drum (and sometimes my whole 'junk' samba drum kit)
a B flat and a C clarinet, sometimes a trumpet as well (we had a boy in a clarinet class who was born with an extremely short left arm so I got him a cornet and had to learn the basics of playing a trumpet in a great hurry)
a ukulele
a guitar
descant and treble recorders, an ocarina and a flute
not forgetting lesson notes and registers, mp3 player (so much easier than the ghetto blaster and cd wallet it replaced!), memory sticks, laptop and small guitar amp to act as a soester with enough oomph to be heard over the sound of infant classes moving to elephant music...
oh, and my handbag and water bottle and lunchbox and mobile phone... and a book to read at lunchtime....
I used teach up to four different instruments to maybe six or more classes per day across West Sussex. No time to be bored in that job! (Except, maybe, in staff meetings?)
There was always a posibility of turning up to teach year 6 samba drumming, to be greeted with 'ah, we forgot to tell you they are on a school trip; now you are here, could you swap lessons and teach the year 4s their ukulele class', or even 'how about teaching the infants'? I always said yes; I expect I should have refused ('not in the contract' or sonething but - why not if I could and that's what they wanted?
I digress; we were armed for bear at bedtime yesterday and a good thing too...
We switched on the apparently ok upstairs oxygen concentrator - and guess what - faults don't just miraculously disappear if the machine IS actually faulty.
The machine did its beeping and cutting out routine just as it had done at 5.15 this morning.
I phoned it in to the 24 hour support number; yes, they would send a technician in the morning and meanwhile I could use the big emergency backup oxygen cylinder overnight. Now, we keep that in the shed at the bottom of the garden...not exactly handy. So we used our own machine that we bought for staying away overnight ('we advise you don't use your privately purchased machine,' says the help desk assistant; I expect that's in her script). And brought up a smaller cylinder. And kept the portable Inogen concentrator nearby for trips to the loo.
Armed for bear.
Garden
In the garden I have big yellow daffodils, big white daffodils, tete-a-tete daffodils, violas, primulas, one anenome, some violets, soldiers-and-sailors, one red camellia flower, the first grape hyacinths and two tulips.
This is a quick scribble, barely larger than the stamp, on a letter I sent to a friend today, done with a four-colour biro!
Music
Tiptoe through the tulips?
I had no idea this song came from 1929!
Or how about Elgar's Wild Bears (aka 'how to send a class of infants completely wild')
Unavailable; carton of Yeo wholemilk (again?) and a white sour dough leaf (again?)
Unexpected tender stem broccoli; every so often one of us doesn't check the picture and description carefully enough;
and we end up with a surprisingly small packet! We could have returned it to the driver, but we weren't at our most brilliant.
Early Alarm
We have a regular early delivery between 7am and 8am which is usually fine.
But this morning we were woken at 5.15am by the alarm on the oxygen nachine in the bedroom. Just one plaintive beep, enough to make us open our eyes. The machine cut out, and restarted... we were both slowly energing from the depths of sleep when it did it again... we sat up and looked at each other... and a third time. It clearly wanted some attention! Luckily we have alternative methods for supplying me with oxygen so we switched the machine off and I used a portable concentrator to get up and dressed and downstairs.
We called the support number, went through the actions ad requested by the person on the help desk, and everything went back to normal.
We have a mains powered concentrator which we bought years ago for going on holiday, and it is all plugged in and ready for action should things not go smoothly tonight.
Early to bed tonight!
Cooking
This is a pan of tomato and vegetable and bacon sauce for pasta which I made properly, that is, chopping up a fresh onion and a fresh red pepper to go in with some bacon lardons and cook together, before adding chopped tomatoes, a mushroom stock cube (a daring new experiment!), herbs, lemon, tomato pureé and a teaspoon of sugar. It will be going in the freezer.
The pan is new; I ordered it for cooking bubble and squeak and other things. It's a decent non-stick pan, and the food sizzles and browns with just a tiny bit of oil or butter and slides right out onto my plate without sticking. Wonderful! I've only had it a couple of days and I love it.
Music
Almost everyone who gets to about grade 4 or 5 piano learns Für Elise and then goes on to play Solfegetio by C P E Bach, one of The Bach's many talented musician sons. Here it is a sweet little harpsichord, the instrument it was composed for
And here's what happens when a jazz piano trio gets hold of it! They are having such fun!
I remember the Jacques Loussier jazz trio playing Bach way back in the - could it be the 1960s?
Fish, and sausage rolls. I'm doing better than last time when I forgot quite a number of items. We can manage a whole week without fish and sausage rolls; there's plenty of fish in the freezer.
I get to the point when I'm doing the online shopping order when I lose the will to continue and just checkout, fingers crossed and hope for the best. There's always the corner shop down the road.
Sprouts
I have to share this. I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I could have eaten the whole pan of sprouts (once my most hated and feared vegetable) and left the casserole and baked potato behind.
I sweated some finely diced onion and thinly sliced sticks of celery in a tiny little bit of oil in a non-stick pan. When they were soft I tipped in a generous quantity of shredded sprouts and stirred it all around until everything was well mixed. Then I added a little water and a quarter teaspoon of Marigold vegetable stock powder, a bay leaf and a squeeze of lemon, put the lid on, and simmered it until it was all just cooked and the water had almost completely evaporated.
Sorry, no quantities - I don't think it's that crucial.
I shall never do sprouts any other way again!
Books
I'm still enjoying 'Reading Lessons' by Carol Atherton but it's not exactly light reading.
So, for relaxation I've begun another 99p cheap kindle deal called 'Starter Villain' by John Scalzi. Not a murder mystery, at least not so far, more of a fantasy thriller;
I haven't met amy 'laugh-out-loud funny' passages yet, but it has raised a smile. It's set in a non-specific contemporary USA; so far politics haven't featured - phew. The action is all fast and whacky and full of trusts and turns.
The sentient cats caught me by surprise, and also the talking dolphins (!) Their command of English is decidedly Anglo-Saxon, but they haven't featured much so far.
It's certainly light-weight, but has some intriguing ideas. Early days yet; I'm reading on to see how it develops.
It's no longer 99p on kindle anymore, by the way)
Music
How about the theme tune for the popular radio drama broadcast on radio between 1946 and 1951; 'Dick Barton Special Agent'. I don't think I've ever listened to an episode, but the music is very familiar.
I've ot a bit distracted from the collage art course by the surprising effect of one of the earlier exercises. The instruction was to consider the effect of speed, and pressure, on mark making.
Like pressing lightly and moving your crayon slowly, or maybe the other way round, fast and light, slow and heavy, or slow and heavy, slow and light...
The effect on the page is interesting, but what was more interesting to me was the way it made me feel 'inside', as it were.
Starting the top left circle, fast and heavy at the centre made me feel tense, almost as thought I was cross about something. Slowing down and reducing the pressure felt as though I was slowly unwinding and calming down. I reversed the process on the second circle.
Jabbing heavily and fiercely at the paper to make lots of heavy dashes, and then gently stroking the crayon to make lighter dashes had similar emotional states associated with them.
The bottom set of lines was mesmerising to create. I rhythmically applied and lifted pressure as I drew the crayon across the page.
Hopefully some of you might grab a pen or pencil or crayon and try it for yourselves. Or not. Or naybe you will have a go and say 'no, the doesn't happen to me...'!
Ɓooks
I've started 'English Lessons' by Carol Atherton
It's an English teacher explaining how she teaches set GCSE texts and why they are important and relevant to young people today. I wish my English Literature teachers had been like her...
Each chapter deals with a different text. So far I have been absolutely spell bound by Robrty Browning's poem 'My Last Duchess'; a cold-blooded account of coercive control, and the way teenagers need to be taught how to behave towards each other. I've never read the poem, but I found it on the net and followed her descriptions as she unpacked it.
Next was 'An Inspector Calls' by J B Priestley. I knew of the pay, but nothing more. Again, Carol Atherton' chapter (subtitled 'On social responsibility is brilliant.
The third chapter will be 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' by Harper Lee. I've read this a number of times and seen the film, but not as a school book.
Two chapters were all I could manage in one session - I need time to ponder.
So I'm about to start another light-hearted easy read for between Mrs Atherton's lessons.
Music
The art stuff I was talking about in the beginning has quite a crossover with playing an instrument. Playing loudly, or gently, fast or slow can convey and emotional moment. The trap is in getting so lost in your feelings that you lose the control needed to play the music! I've always found that a fascinating dilemma.
Murray Perahia and Schubert's Impromptu in Eb major shows what I mean...
Zoom Church with my lovely on-line church in Leicestershire, and 'coffee after church' zoom with my lovely home church community afterwards. I find that a great way to participate in a church service (livestream is not the same) and join in after church coffee tine as well.
Does Reading count?
I finished a book that I started yesterday. It's a 'cosy' detective story set in a village in Quebec, over Christmas and New Year. I heard Annie Gray, one of the panellists on the BBC radio programme 'the Kitchen Cabinet' talking about it, because she loves the idea of the village with the perfect bakery, bistro, community spirit, and the descriptions of the food they all eat...
So when it appeared on the list of books for 99 pence on Kindle it didn't take long to decide to give it a punt.
It's book 2 in the series, and I enjoyed it enough to want to read the others, but I'll probably wait until they are on offer rather than pay the full price.
I'd previously read another cosy mystery that popped up on a 99p Kindle deals list;
It's a very similar concept; small village community, all very food centred, this time set in Perigord, France. I won't be looking for the rest of the series though... too much food (yes, really!) and having the recipes casually incorporated into the conversations began to feel like padding out the story after a while.
Plus pages and pages of history, mostly about the different groups of the French Resistance during the final stages of world war 2 which after a while became completely confusing. Dare I say I started skim reading to get back to the plot?
What about a bit of Art?
I'm going to fall behind on the collage course if I don't crack on with it tomorrow! I can always jot down the last tasks at the end of the course if it looks like I might not complete everything by the final deadline. It's not as though it's for an exam!
I did a little, but nothing worth sharing. It's all at the 'exploratory' stage.
Cooking?
I made a vegetable sauce for pasta. No, to be a bit more accurate I assembled a sauce;
Half a packet of frozen mixed grilled Mediterranean vegetables, a fair quantity of frozen diced onions, a teaspoon of garlic paste, a beef stock cube, a tin of finely chopped ftomatoes and half the tin of boiling water were all loaded into the crockpot, along with a good shake of mixed herbs and some pepper. I left it to do its stuff on high for two hours. It tasted alright! Some of the vegetable pieces were a bit chunky, so I chopped at it with the kitchen scissors until I was happy.
Half for the freezer and half for supper with pasta and grated cheese.
Scissors are an excellent kitchen utensil. When I served up spaghetti I used to push the plates close together, serve up, and then snip round the edges of the plates to deal with straggly strands.
Or for sandwiches, especially smoked salmon, or sliced meat; they are so much easier to cut into quarters with scissors.
My mother taught me to chop herbs by putting them in a sturdy glass, and snipping them with the scissors held vertically.
Well that was the day...
Music
It's heading towards bedtime after a very gentle, peaceful, Sunday.
I have a cd called Lullabies and Goodbyes by the London Quartet, also called Cantabile. I this the current line up of members is different, but this comes from when it was four men, singing so very, very beautifully...
Here is Hushabye Mountain from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
There are days, every so often, where I haven't much energy, and also I just want to browse on snacks all the time...
I've finished of the last few macadamia nuts, dented a packet of potato snacks, demolished a snack pack of chocolate covered rice cakes and had a couple of chocolate minstrels.... there are still three hours before bedtime. Let's hope the eaty eaty eaty mood is passing!
Bubble and squeak is proving to be a pretty good dairy- egg- wholegrain- breakfast alternative. The other day I prepped and cooked some swede, potato and cabbage, mushed it all up and stuck it in a pot in the ridge. It's been dead simple to just heat a little oil in a pan and sizzle up a small portion. Salt, pepper, maybe ketchup or Norfolk Nobbly pickle for variety... yum yum.
We've been using Albert Bartlett baking potatoes recently, so flavourful, such a lovely texture. I put one out to see if it would chit, and it's beginning to she sign of growth from the eyes. Excellent! I hope I can manage to grow some!
We had some business to transact at the local branch of the bank my father used, in connection with his estate (sounds so very formal put that way) It was going to be much simpler if my brother was present in the flesh, although it could have done on-line, and so my he came over (a three hour drive, not to be done lightly!).
The bank stuff was dealt with efficiently (my brother regaling me with horror stories from his own banking experiences all the while as the bank adviser tapped away at her computer screen, wonder what she thought of that) and then we were free for a rather late lunch.
Where was the sun we were promised on the weather forecast? Although it was now about 2pm and I think that was when it was supposed to start clouding over.
It was lovely to have a leisurely lunch together; BB had scoped out the nearby restaurants with outside tables while my brother and I were answering questions and signing things. We had a pleasant meal and caught up on news, chat, and so forth.
He was also able to collect some items for valuation, and measure up some furniture in my father’s flat, so all in all a useful and productive trip.
I took home my father’s Memorabilia books; he used to slot bits and pieces of paper and so on into the clear plastic pockets of those A4 'display books'.
I had a quick look at one of the books today; a few letters to and from me and my brother when we were at boarding school, some letters from my grandmother to her children at their schools, letters about the bombing in Southampton where she did war service as a locum GP...
A letter from my grandfather to his future father-in-law asking for permission to marry, newspaper cuttings - it's all jumbled up in random order, skipping through the decades, centuries even, family anecdotes, photographs, letters, transcripts...
Fascinating reading, and I've what no idea we will do with it all. Keep it, I suppose, through the generations, to use in school projects, family research... Eventually the people will become shadow people, no longer existing as 'live' memories, and therefore all the papers and photographs will have less emotional weight and ge easier to deal with.
I keet things because they connect me to my grandmother and mother, and other friends and relatives, but once I'm gone, that connection will be broken.
The things - a mug she had, a tiny doll in a matchbox and some little miniature vases from her curiosity cupboard, some brass candlesticks that stood on the bureau in the dining room, will cease to be important in that way, and become mere objects in their own right. The next generation can do as they wish with them; keep, sell, donate. It won't matter.
I find that a comforting thought. They might weigh me down a little now, but as their hold on me loosens, I feel lighter, more free.
Music
I went looking for something, I wasn't sure what, but then I found this;
Harpo Marx playing Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody on his harp;
Further down the screen was this performance by Jeneba Janneh-Mason
And here's a favourite for my parents, who introduced me to the humour of Victor Borge...
BB has started building another model. It was his birthday recently and son sent him a Book Nook flower shop kit.
Large hands make constructing all the tiny vases of flowers quite a challenge...
Now, about that Notturno;
Sencosue mentioned there is a Notturno piano trio by Franz Schubert (the one we've all heard of!). I hadn't come across this; I'm only just beginning to listen to more chamber music and there is a lot to discover.
I do know the Schubert Trout Quintet, and his C major quintet (tissues at the ready for the slow movement every time) but not the Notturno trio.
I went hunting. There are several recordings varying in length from 8 and a half minutes to nearly 15 minutes... wow, that's quite a difference in time!
I plumped the the longer recording, mainly because the pianist was none other than Luc Janssun, one of the two brothers who raced through the Poulenc double Piano Concerto on the recording I posted a few days ago.
I couldn't believe that it was the same pianist,
Here's one of the fast versions for comparison.
Another bag of Stuff has left the house - mostly straight into the bin. I did consult with daughter before I chucked it; it was her stuff after all. I unearthed it all from a half-forgotten drawer when I was looking for something else. There were a few items that went into the charity bag; a hat, some gloves, a small empty tin, but the rest was all 'unwantable' by anyone. That's another win in the emptying the house project.
I've come to the conclusion that my approach to clearing clutter is the same as my approach to losing weight... slowly, slowly, slowly... a few small bags of clutter, a few ounces of excess avoid du pois at a time! I'm in this for the long term..,
Thank you, bloggers and commenters, for all the suggestions, recommendations, recipes, craft and gardening tips, encouragement and companionship! Long may we all continue!
Reading other people's blogs and the ensuing comments is a delight for me. I learn all kinds of things, and collect book recommendations, recipes, gardening tips, craft ideas. I feel so lucky to be part of a community all sharing our interests and the ups and downs in our lives, and encouraging each other as we go. Thank you, everyone.
I'm just managing to keep on top of everything with the on-line collage course I've signed up for. It's a free course from the futurelearn website. This disadvantage of choising the 'free' option is that aaccess will cease at the end of the fourth week, unless I choose to pay a course fee.
This course us about creating your own collage papers, as well as, of maybe instead of chopping bits out of magazines etc. Today's task was about graduating tone.
When I was making these grids I could feel the connections between how I go about playing the piano or harpsichord or organ expressively and how I try to turn marks with pencil, roller-ball pen and crayon on paper into expressive marks. I haven't exactly managed to form my thoughts into organised sentences yet... but I know what I'm trying to formulate.
It's to do with repeated notes/marks, and piling marks/notes on top of each other, and how heavily you press/play, and that kind of thing...
I substituted a child's black crayon for ink, after knocking over the bottle the other day!
Weather
After such an unpromising start to the day, the afternoon was beautiful. It was like a trailer for the real spring to come. Vicky came to do the garden and has left it looking cared for and refreshed, ready for the change in seasons to come.
Slugs and snails
I was delighted to read an article suggesting that there will be fewer slugs and snails around this year, because of all the cold weather... After losing the battles, and my broad beans, to the beasts last year, I shall try again this time with renewed enthusiasm.
Music
Although this is called 'Notturno', it's always sounded more of a day-time piece to me. It's by Edvard Greig; I used to play the original piano version and never realised he had orchestrated it.
.... if I could stick with something until it is finished, and maybe read just one, or two, or maybe only three books at a time... sew ot knit just one thing at a time...
But then I wouldn't be me, I'd be someone else...
....living a different kind of life...
...doing different kinds of things...
Music
While I was pondering the above thought (not a new one to me!) a piece of music came crashing into my head;
The Poulenc concerto for two pianos...
I think this is the version I had on a cassette tape which I played over and over again when revising for A-levels in the 1970s.
I love the way it crashes from one mood to the next with almost no warning... rather like the way my mind flits from here to there.
I first heard this when two students at Winchester College performed it with huge enthusiasm at an end of term concert. To my horror and embarrassment it made me cry several times; why? I think it was the first time I had been moved so deeply by a piece of music.
I think it could be because in-between the pyrotechics there are moments of great calm and beauty. And because it is such a celebration of happiness and because the two pianists are playing in perfect partnership.
There's also a bit in the second movement which took me straight back to hearing the music of the gamelan in Bali. At that time I was at boarding school and really struggling to adapt, and flying out to Indonesia on the holidays where my parents lived. We had the most wonderful holiday in Bali, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by sadness.
So perhaps it's not surprising as a homesick teenager I succumbed to tears.
When I was searching for the concerto on YouTube I came across this tremendous recent performance by two brothers... I'm not sure how often they were able to breathe in their joyous helter-skeltering around the piano.
Drawing and Art
I drew the rooks when I got home... while we were out yesterday we passed a rookery. Each nest was an unsteady looking arrangement of sticks pointing in all directions. I suspect they were already incubating eggs. Many nests had a rook standing sentinel close beside.
I used to pass several different rookeries as I hurtled round the county from djembe lesson to ukuleles, keyboards to recorders, samba (brilliant fun but very noisy) to clarinets... It used to be a bit of a battle to keep my eyes and attention focused on driving when everything around was so much more interesting.
New Word of the day - borborygmus
While following up a comment of Ang's yesterday about a meal replacement product called Huel I disappeared down an Internet rabbit hole and discovered this;
(little realising I would be afflicted with borborygmi myself after lunch...)
I have solved the conundrum of finding the perfect Breakfast with no dairy, wholegrains or eggs, but substantial enough to 'line the stomach' as they used to say to avoid getting upsets from my morning iron supplements;
Bara Brith!
It's only a small piece. There's a tiny amount of milk in my coffee, and you need an egg to make a 2lb loaf of Bara Brith, but I reckon that's probably too small a quantity of either to count.
Then, an hour later, I can have a proper breakfast of porridge and a pot of tea, or maybe more coffee.
What I want to avoid is putting on weight from having two good breakfasts a day!
Supper
I tried a Nigella; sardines and spaghetti
(Do you remember how we used to say 'I'm cooking a Delia tonight'?)
It's basically a tin of sardines in tomato sauce heated up and tossed through cooked spaghetti. She improves it with chopped spring onions, lemon zest and garlic cooked together in a little olive oil, mixing in the sardines in tomato sauce and heating this all up together.
I always remove the bones from tinned sardines; I hate finding crunchy bits when I'm eating them in pate, or on toast, or, now, mixed in spaghetti! Definitely something we'll have again.
Cold weather
BB commented that March was the month when one could experience every season over the weeks.
Today was winter...
Once the sleet and icy rain showers were over, it was still, and cold, and grey, and... Winter.
We went out in-between the rain to get some errands done, and visit a fairly local art showroom for a few bits and pieces. I used to drive the route every week as a peri music teacher. It's full of memories;
'It was about here that I took the car swimming' I remarked; the puddle had gecome a flood across the road, much worse around the bend. My heart was in my mouth as I persuaded the car onwards, past a very cross man standing next to his BMW that hadn't made it through...
'This is the place I was forced off the road by two van drivers racing each other over the brow of the hill,' -luckily it was the spot where the verge broadened out enough for ne to swerve onto it'
And there was the time that it began to snow... gently at first but then it became thick and scary.... I arrived to find the school had closed... there was nothing else I could do but to turn round and make my way home through the winter wonderland!
Music
The Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten is my favourite music for Christmas.
The incomparable Ossian Ellis, playing the Interlude.
For me it encapsulates Christmas Eve, now so many weeks ago.
Today I have spent almost the whole day on art. When did that last happen?
Zoom Church
I did talk myself into joining the zoom church I attend. That was well worth doing, for the familiar community, I really have no excuse for skipping church when it is in my very own living room. I always feel better afterwards; it grounds me, settles me after the previous week and sets me up ready for the coming week.
I wasn't entirely in agreement with the first hymn, at least not the first two lines, and most of the following two verses;
Father, hear the prayer we offer: Not for ease that prayer shall be, But for strength that we may ever Live our lives courageously.
Not forever in green pastures Do we ask our way to be; But the steep and rugged pathway May we tread rejoicingly.
Not forever by still waters Would we idly rest and stay; But would smite the living fountains From the rocks along our way.
Be our strength in hours of weakness, In our wanderings be our guide; Through endeavour, failure, danger, Father, be thou at our side.
But I pulled myself together for the last verse; now that was closer to my mood! Oddly enough it was this hymn that kept me going while I was doing my step ups and triceps rows and bicep curls and everything else through the pulmonary rehab course last Summer.
'How do you plan to keep going with the exercise programme?' they asked at the end of the course. I'm so glad they didn't ask during this Lent; in the first day of my Lent course we were challenged to (tactful ly) tell the truth.
I confess, I stopped doing 'their' exercises the next day, and resumed my previous regime with relief.
Sewing
Ah. Another confession coming up... the advantage of zoom church is that you can knit or sew something straightforward... especially while listening to the reflection. So I managed to get a good deal done to the current patch during the reflection.
Daffodils
I went outside briefly this morning but didn't stay long. The sun was warm but the air was still sharp on my face. My spring tubs are looking lovely, with daffodils blooming now and tulips to come. My attention was caught by the way the daffodil bulbs deveop into flowers;
Week to a View
I'm trying to summarise each week of the year in (scruffy) little sketches, I'm way behind, but in my defence I did start about several weeks late, and then I gad (still have, but not so much now) that miserably painful stiff neck.
The last week of January was stupidly busy, and then over the weekend I had to top- and-tail and address about 80 letters to people in my father’s address book. (the pencil erasers are hiding people's names)
This was the week before the cremation; the letters, and also notebook swaps and Collaboration stitching were all posted on Monday morning.
I spent a lot of time on the telephone (yakka, yakka, yakka) doing 'sadmin', and also working with my brother on the cremation service details (yakka yakka yakka).
We got there; the deadlines came and we met them all!
Two intensely busy weeks.
Music
It has to be l'Abeille, the Bee (no, not that one) by Franz Schubert (not that one either; did you know there were two composers called Franz Schubert?)
This is Anna-Sophie Mutter; she shaves several seconds off the usual performance time.
My daughter learned this; it was frantic work keeping up with her on the piano! I'm not sure I could have coped with the blistering tempo set by A-SM. Do you suppose she and her accompanist were sharing a secret joke?
Woke to another beautiful pale pink frosty clear morning... so perfect to look at but rather nippy to experience for real...
Breakfast
I'm back on ferrous sulphate (iron) pills which takes some thinking about. 'Take one tablet twice a day with food. Take one hour before, or two hours eating eggs, wholegrains, milk, or calcium supplements' say the destructions (yes, we always call any instructions 'destructions', reasons lost in the mists of time).
My preferred breakfast us whole grain cereal with hot milk. Or wholemeal toast. Huh.
Plus I take a calcium supplement twice a day. Huh again.
So I'm now having a small slice of boring brown toast, a small non-milky coffee and an iron tablet as a first breakfast.
I had a slight difficulty with my toast this morning;
I haven't burned my toast that spectacularly for decades! I popped the red button, fished out the charred remains of the bread and dropped it, still smoking, in the sink. My mother taught me that the quickest way to clear a smoke-filled space is to work the door like a huge vertical fan, by opening and shutting it. I think that was something she learned as a child in the war; her home town of Velsen, in the Netherlands, is at the seaward end of the Amsterdam ship canal and was heavily bombed.
Anyway the door thing cleared the kitchen of smoke and I made more toast.
An hour later I had my second breakfast!
Tea, muesli with hot milk, water, and a dish of assorted tablets and capsules. That big white one gets chewed up - it's the calcium supplement. My mother loathed them; wpshe was prescribed them after her stroke. My father would 'dish up' her meds in a little dish, as I do now, and she would drop the calcium one straight in the bin.
The Big Red Capsule is a new additional med, and needs to be taken with a substantial meals ie more than a small slice of toast, hence two breakfasts.
'Hiking'
Later I added yesterday's step count to my current virtual hike, the Jurrasic Coast Path. A measly 1200 steps; I try to hit 2000 before bed but my heart wasn't in it yesterday.
I'm really enjoying the views and the weather, without the effort of going up up uphill and then down down downhill.
You can really imagine yourself there!
Art
Because I'm not very busy at the moment (heavy on the irony there) and I really neeeeed another thing to do (you may laugh at me for no longer than 10 seconds please), I have signed on to a futurelearn free online course on collage. It's only 4 weeks long, and the expectation is that you spend 3-4 hours a week doing the lessons.
Today was my first day. Week 1 is all about mark-making, confining yourself to just using black.
I was having a lovely time, 'taking a line for a walk' to begin with
(That's a Paul Klee quote). Then I turned the page and hot our a brush and my beautiful carbon black ink. I think you can guess what happened next
That ink sure is black! And spreads so very, very fast! BB leapt to my rescue and between us we managed to keep the ink to just the top of my small table, and he did a magnificent job of mopping it up.
And then I put the ink away and carried on with a pencil. Much safer.
Music
Well, musics, really.
One thing led to another...
With so much 'black' featuring in today I thought of the folk song 'Black is the colour of my true love's hair'.
I did not expect to find this 1964 recording... it is fascinatingly different.
I had come across Cathy Berberian before in primary school music teaching. One of the units for year 5/6 was on graphic scores, ie scores using alternatives to traditional music notation. It featured an extract from 'Stripsody', compised and performed by Cathy Berberian. You needed to have your wits about you to survive this lesson as a teacher, but if all went well it was a brilliant unit.
The sniggering started with the title, 'Stripsody', an amalgam of 'cartoon strips' and 'rhapsody'. Once that was under control, you could issue handouts of the graphic score. I used to agree a pact with the children that I would play the extract twice; could they get the laughter over and done with on the first hearing, and then try and control themselves and concentrate at the second hearing. That usually worked.
We then went on to create individual, and group 'Stripsody' style compositions, starting with one word, written as it was to be sounded. This was always popular, (and also entertaining and inclusive. I would circle round and help, and suggest to shy children that they could write, and make, a tiny sound, or even hold up a blank piece of paper and contribute a silent space to the composition. It's remarkable how expressively the children could use their voice.
Do sausage rolls count for pi day? In my world they do.
(Why pi day? Because pi is 3.14, which if you write your days in the format m/dd rather than dd/m then 3.14 is 14th March)
Which reminds me
Data Organisation on my lap top
I now save all my word documents with the name in the format
yyyy mm dd title
Eg
2025 03 06 bibbety bobbity
because then then all get listed in date order. If I'm really organised I'll put the file name and location in small print at the bottom of the document, eg
Medical/test results/2025 03 06 blood test
Unlike my father who just clicked 'save' and relied on the search function to find it later - a method that became increasingly tricky when he couldn't remember the name of the person or place he wanted to find...
Slippers
These arrived yesterday
Oh me oh my. They are perfect. Felt uppers and linings and weatherproof soles. I haven't had any proper slippers since I threw out my venerable sheepskin ones, after a near disastrous slither a few years ago. I came down the top half dozen stairs of our wooden staircase on my back and bottom. The soles had worn nearly through and become polished with age.
I was glad of these slippers this morning as we went out at 6.15 to watch the partial eclipse of the Supermoon... alas, it had already set! We have enough of a slope on the western side of the house, as well as te houses and trees opposite, to mean that the moon had already disappeared below our horizon.
However it was a lovely crisp pale pink frosty morning and my feet stayed warm...
Music
I spent a solid four hours on paperwork this morning, copying, collating, gathering information and packaging it up to post out to various people. Argh.
The only good thing about it all is that it's done. Not everything, but everything for now. I shall treat it like 'work', and now have 'workfree' weekend. Maybe.
And that's the reason I've chosen Byrdlo from Pictures at an Exhibition, originally written for piano by Mussorgsky and brilliantly orchestrated by Ravel.
Byrdlo means ox-cart; you can hear the heavy wagon, pulled along the muddy road by a team of oxen, grinding closer and closer until it passes you, and carries on it's way.
A bit like the piles of paper I steadily created, filling the table, until they were filed and sorted and reduced to a small stack on envelopes ready or the post.
Thought for the day; who were my role models? Who has kept me steady when I was having a wobble?
I think my main influence has to be my mother. Her incredible insights into people and children helped me when I became a parent. She had so much understanding of what was important, and what wasn't.
Later, I learned so juch from watching the huge effort she made to remain cheerful for the last few years of her life after a severe stroke robbed her of all movement, of any kind whatsoever, on her left hand side. Not to mention the almost constant pain from phantom nerve signals to her stroke damaged brain.
She is the example I keep before me whenever I can feel a bit of a 'pity me, poor me' coming on. She wasn't perfect by any means, but then, who is? That, too, is helpful when I'm having 'a moment '!
So here's some of her favourite music. She constantly listened to a recording of the Dinu Lupatti recital at the Besançon Music Festival while she was in hospital recovering and going through rehab, especially the Schubert Impromptu in G flat
Other news? None... a bit of filing, some correspondence, a short look around the garden, my new slippers arrived, I cooked lunch (meat loaf), and supper (macaroni cheese), a lot of sitting around reading, and thecday is done!
We're setting the alarm early tonight, in the hope of seeing the partial eclipse of the supermoon shortly after 6.15 am. Skies and clouds permitting...
Off to do various errands, including taking five large bags to the charity shop.
I comment I made on someone else's blog prodded me into action. Since I aim to get two bags of donations out of the house every month, this takes care of January, February and half of March all in one go.
I now telephone ahead to check if they want donations; there were a few weeks when none of the shops were accepting anything as they had all been inspected by the local fire service and were busy changing the way they stored stuff. They are sometimes more particular what they need too.
The man who answered my call sounded caution 'what sort of things are you bringing?'
'Some clothes, one bag of books, some gifts and ornaments. And NO cds, cassettes, videos or dvds' I answered; I know they are swamped by cds, and really don't want VHS tapes or cassette tapes!
Shopping
I had to go and pay the deposit for hiring a room later this year at a National Trust garden. It was too cold for me to walk round, but the shop was empty. Whoop whoop! I don't normally get a chance to browse round a Gift Shop... all sorts of bits and pieces seemed to leap into my basket; honey, biscuits, a replacement bird feeder, some seeds... I did enjoy myself!
Garden
Instead of going in and flopping on the settee when we got back home, I went for little prowl around the garden, taking advantage of the fact I was still all wrapped up against the cold.
Daughter cafe me this china sheep stuffed with sheep wool for Christmas. You hang it up for the birds to use for nest building. As you can see it didn't take long for them to find it. You can buy them, and extra wool, from the National Trust shop, I noticed.
The little tete-a-tete daffodils are glowing at the bottom of the garden. I bought them for my mother's windowsill when she was in a care home over the winter of 2015-6. I replaced them every week and planted them under the hedge so I could enjoy them after she died as a memorial.
The cardoons are looking great! You might spot the little red and blue flowers of 'soldiers and sailors' at the back creeping through the fence.
The clematis vines are all showing leafy buds.
The afternoon disappeared in menu planning and then a piano lesson; I've started teaching again after taking an extended break into this year. I've missed my students, all three of them!
Thought for the Day
I don't think I stopped to think today... I want to get vacation into the habit of sitting and thinking...
Music
Something gentle and relaxing...
The opening Pavane from the Mother Goose Suite, the orchestral version
