Sunday 30th November - circle

 I saved this scavenger hunt word until last on purpose. The church year has come full circle; it begins in the first day of Advent which is today, unlike a calendar year which runs January to December.

This is my end-of-November tree picture. One more to go.

Back to Advent; each Sunday has its own theme. Our church is following the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love... I'm not sure if I've got Peace and Love the right way round; all will become clear next Sunday. But Hope is definitely the one for today. The reading in church was that bit from the book of Isaiah, chapter 2;

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the temple of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways,

    so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion,

    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

4 He will judge between the nations

    and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

    and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

    nor will they train for war anymore.

5 Come, descendants of Jacob,

    let us walk in the light of the Lord.

That's certainly something to hope for...

If you are Church of England (as I am) and your church follows the pattern in the service book (as my zoom church mostly does) you will have heard the collect - a type of prayer - for the first Sunday in Advent. The originals came from 'The Book Of Common Prayer', written hundreds of years ago, worth considering as much for the beautiful language as for the content. 

(I'm putting the reading and collect here as much for my benefit as anyone else's; if it's not relevant to your spiritual beliefs please just skip over it.)

We hold on to the tradition of marking the days until Christmas; the wreath, put together just in time this afternoon, and the first candle switched on (I always had real candles but...)

And our chocolate Advent calendars ready and waiting;

I haven't lost sight of my circle...

I've been reading a few paragraphs at a time from Ronald Blythe's book 'In the Artist's Garden'. His mind flits from topic to topic like a butterfly. Here is part of the last page for the chaper on November 

He was a lay reader, I believe,  and led services in the scattered village churches near his home to help the hard-pressed Vicar. Hence the comment about remembering to read the collect.

It was the last couple of sentences that really caught my eye, about scything the withered grass, and at the same time sowing next year's seeds. 'Next summer's flowers are counting the days until it's time to grow', just I am counting the days until Christmas. 

Sorry,  I've blethered on a bit... time for a lie down in a darkened room!

Saturday 29th November - scavenger hunt 29; bark

I did briefly think about writing something about the lady who goes past out house every morning with two small dogs in harnesses that pull and stop and go and yip yip yip noisily and hysterically at every dog, cat, bird, man, woman, child they meet along the way... 'No need for that,' says neighbour across the road and four houses along. 'I've told her that as well.' I guess someone was going to say something at some time... He's got a heart of gold, though, and a real concern for everyone he meets, knows everyone's name... an uncharitable person might think he's nosey but they would be wrong. He is genuinely interested in everyone, asks after them and their family, looks out for the older people...

I haven't seen her recently, perhaps she goes the other way now, or maybe doesn't go out so much in winter. I hope she and her annoying little dogs are alright. Perhaps I'll ask that neighbour. He'll know.

Oh, I have written about 'bark' after all. Once I sit down at a laptop (so much easier than tapping at a tablet or phone) my fingers run away and it all just happens.

I posted off my 2By2 stitching yesterday, or rather my husband did, bless him. So I spent this morning resetting my sewing 'wip' basket;

Which had various perle threads, a horrid tangle of embroidery cotton ends left over from the autumn leaves of last month, a biscuit stamp waiting for me to have another go at speculaas (Nigella's recipe gets a 'yes' from me) a felted brooch from Ang, some skeins of floss in Autumn colours, the coloured pegs I use all the time, a tape measure, a card drum of stitch markers for knitting (why?). Stacked behind the felt sewing case are card templates for 2By2, a potential flat gift (hidden out of sight), a tape measure (again why?) and the needle case that should be in the sewing case. 

In other words, a muddle.

Then I turned my attention to the settee where I sit and my the newish table. No pictures; too shameful, and the disturbance to the air as I aimed my phone in the general direction of the tottering piles and heaps of books, printed recipes, letters, pamphlets, and catalogues would have been enough to cause a devastating bookslide.   

Ah. I feel I can sit down safely again.

But oh! the dining room table... 

Here we go again...

I sit and do my stuff on the left, my husband sits on the right. The tidy side.

Poem

A pretty fair summary for quite a lot of November, I thought. But the sun has been out today, off and on... the leaves on the oak at the bottom of the garden suddenly turned to gold...

I've been going back through photographs, deleting duplicated and so on. This was obviously captured from twitter (back in the days before X - that's when I left)

There are times when we need to rediscover words like this.

Chopin (1810 - 1848); Preludes Op 28 no 3 in G, one of the happiest.

Andras Schiff playing on an 1890s Pleyel piano

  

Murray Perhaia on a modern concert grand (probably a Steinway!)

Friday 28th November - scavenger hunt - write a chatty email

 I think I've already done this once this month, but two in a month won't hurt! 

I've finished reading a book called 

'We'll prescribe you a cat' by Syou Ishida. I'm still not sure what to make of it. What I did enjoy is the description of life in the Japanese city. It's so different to England and I find it fascinating. I sort of enjoyed the stories, because that is what the book is, a series of episodes linked by the idea of this odd clinic which treats people's problems by 'prescribing' them a cat. 

I know several people who loathe cats, can't bear to be in the same room as a cat... this book is NOT for them!

It's all a bit weird, and gets even stranger towards the end. Do I like it? I still don't know.

I met up with a school friend I hadn't seen much of in maybe 35 years, at Ham House on the Thames last Summer. We were thick as thieves all through our prep school years, and then she went off to boarding school, and what with one thing and another our paths didn't cross. But we discovered that our original friendship was strong enough to withstand the distance of miles and years. She had been given the book, read it, and passed it on - we're both cat lovers so she knew I'd like to read it.

So that's who I wrote the chatty email to.

Poem

Fog

By Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

 from The Poetry Foundation

Music

The 'cat' duet performed at the 1996 Last Night of the Proms.

Thursday 27th November - scavenger hunt; parkland

 Not this...

The grounds of Launde Abbey, near Oakham. We stayed at a farm close by back in the Summer...

But this;

 The view from our front window this afternoon! Our next door neighbours are in hopefully the final stages of an extension to the back of their house. It's been fascinating watching the progress, from the arrival of the digger back in July, until now; and all yhe trades seem to be in; plastering, electricians, carpenters... 

The road outside has been a carpark all summer and autumn. We don't mind; we've been parking in the road to save our car from getting scratched as diggers and skips and deliveries gave been happening. Free entertainment! And all the different workmen have been careful, thoughtful, polite and relatively quiet.

So, we are in 'Parkland', and hoping and praying that our neighbours will have their new kitchen installed and be able to move in to the extension in time for Christmas. It's looking good...

Music

Scriabin prelude op 11 no 4 in E minor. Another favourite of mine. 

Wednesday 26th November - scavenger hunt; house

 I received two different Christmas houses today;

One from my daughter;

This is a Roger la Borde Advent calender. It's currently just two pieces of really stiff cardboard. Every day you press out a precut shape and slowly assemble the gorgeous tree house. Only five more sleeps!

And one from my son;

A cute little battery lantern. I've put it with this side facing. The other side shows Father Christmas but obviously he won't be arriving for a month - yes - just a month from now.

I love thought of living in either of these little houses. I'm also certain that I'd hate the reality! 

Once December arrives I shall pick up where I left of with the Corinne Lapierre Advent Calendar I was sewing last year. I'm about halfway through. 

This is what it should look like when it's finished. 

I remember I had a problem with the Christmas tree scene, and for some reason swapped over the Daddy Mouse and the little girl mouse. I'm looking forward to getting it out again.

Poem

I'm holding on to yesterday's for another day.

Music

I'm still in the mood for Scriabin Preludes, another from op 11. This time no. 15 in Dflat, another one that I still enjoy playing. 

One of the Chalet School books by Elinor Brent-Dyer mentions a pupil learning some Scriabin for a school concert. That's all I remember... neither the pupil's name, nor the piece.

Tuesday 25th November - scavenger hunt; yellow

 Yellow is such a cheerful colour, but there's not a lot about at this time of year. I haven't been to a garden centre recently so I don't know if they are selling pots ready-planted with tete-a-tete daffodils yet.

Our neighbour opposite has a great bank of yellow winter flowering jasmine below her window at the front. 

Photograph from Gardener's World website

It's one of the things I look for, a signpost through the seasons, along with the shy pale blossoms on the ancient cherry tree, which is also outside her house.

The flowers are a reminder that the seasons turn, that it won't be cold and dark and grey forever. 

Poem

I met this poem for first time in a rather anateurish anthology which had been produced specifically for the hospital waiting rooms. I have been so delighted every time I've come across it since. This comes from my Poems On The Underground book.

Take heart!

Music

Anothe Scuabin prelude, Op 11 no 11 in B major. I love these little miniatures. They are illustrations in a story book, or like opening a window onto a scene.

Monday 24th November - don't try this at home

 A new recipe for scones;

To make just 3 scones;

Measure into a bowl about 4oz or thereabouts SR Flour,

Add 2 oz Benecol olive oil spread

STOP 

and attempt to put 1 oz of spread back into tub

Use the rubbing in method to combine whatever ever is left in the bowl until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Or clumpy breadcrumbs because the spread is very soft. Just do the best you can.

Add a little sugar, about half an ounce, that's sort of half a tablespoon, and stir it in.

Add enough milk to make a soft, not sticky, not firm dough, turning it out onto a floured board. 

STOP

Because you realise that you are out of milk. You remember that 'yogurt biscuits' exist in USA and their biscuit is sort of the same as a scone. So spoon enough yoghurt, including the watery  bits from the tub of Greek yoghurt into your crumbly clumpy mixture. How much yoghurt? A bit less than you thought. 

Turn the sticky unmanageable mixture onto a board floured fairly thickly with flour

STOP, 

make sure you use SR flour, in case your niggling suspicion that you used plain instead of SR flour at the beginning is correct.

Somehow arrive at 3 pieces of dough, roughly scone size and shape.

Cook in air fryer basket for 12 minutes at 200

Cool, and gingerly try one. They look scone-like, taste scone-like but they are undercooked.

Bung them back in the air fryer, upside down, for another 5 minutes even though they are already cooked. Walk away. Abandon them in disgust.

Some hours later remember and retrieve them and put them on a plate. Walk away again. What a shambles.

Next day, BB discovers them and against my better judgement devours them with his morning coffee.

'These are pretty good,' says through a mouth full of scone and marmalade.' Wish I'd found them yesterday.' Words fail me. Miraculously they are OK.

Don't tell Marry Berry, Prue Leith or Paul Hollywood.

I shall call this method Scavenger Scones in honour of the scavenger hunt, and I hope to never follow it again!

Poem

I haven't finished with yesterday's. 

Music

Op 2 no 2. Centuries ago I learned this for my grade 7, and it has stayed with me ever since.

Sunday 23rd November - Office

 Maybe the nearest I have to a home office is the shambles that it my side of the dining room table...

But, this Sunday evening, it's not that kind of office I was thinking about.

Monasteries and Convents and Priests and many Lay People are familiar with idea of the Daily Office, sets of prayers said at set times of the day. Members of the various Christian communities and organisations often commit to praying, using the given forms and scripture readings that their community prescribes.

 If you have read Rev Richard Cole's books, or watched 'Murder at Evensong', you might remember that the priest, Canon Clements, always says the service of morning prayer in the church.

Here's the AI overview;

Over the decades I've used many different daily prayer books and study guides, and various apps on my phone. My problem is that I just don't  like to stick to any one for any length of time.

Now I'm in between... I've finished taking a couple of weeks thinking about The Lords Prayer 

Yes, I  really did read the Ladybird children's book, and the simple prayers inside

looking at all the pictures, drawn in the 1980s 

For now I shall choose a short poem for each day, and see where that leads me, as my daily office for the rest of November. 

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

by Langston Hughes

From poemhunter

I think replacing the word 'dreams' with 'hope' might make it less of a poem, but more of  prayer.

('Office' is in my November scavenger hunt)

Prelude in A minor op 11 no 2 

Saturday 22nd November - Carrot Man

 A number of years ago I discovered a youtube tutorial on how to paint people based on carrot shapes. It's long enough ago that I can't find it anymore. 

So frustrating. 

However I did manage to find these sketches from various sketchbooks dated 2020

 The carrot shape seems to be a remarkably effective way to approach creating people, as long as you don't mind them looking away from you!

Today I did manage to find these more recent YouTube tutorials;

I didn't have my watercolours to hand, so vaguely followed the instructions for the second tutorials with coloured pencils and a fineliner pen.

They came out ok too!

'Man' is another scavenger prompt. Hooray!

Friday 21st November - snow and Debussy

Snow, or sort of snow, or nearly snow, or lots of snow... most of us will have had some sort of snow.

As far as I know we only gave a few words for snow in English, but according to the BBC the Scots have 421! When I spent a few seconds researching 'number of words for snow' just now, I wasn't expecting this. Here are a few examples;

• feefle - to swirl

• flindrikin - a slight snow shower

• snaw-pouther - fine driving snow

• spitters - small drops or flakes of wind-driven rain or snow

• unbrak - the beginning of a thaw

• sneesl - just beginning to snow or sleet

• skelf - a large snowflake

• Well, I can tell you that when that sneesl came on Wednesday morning, the snow fell in large wet skelfs after about half an hour of spitters.

• 
  

• Debussy (another scavenger hunt find!) has a couple of snow pieces.

• 
  The Snow Is Dancing from Children's Corner played by Seong-Jin Cho

• 
  

• 
  Des Pas Sur La Neige from Préludes book 1 played by Daniel Baremboim

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

• 
  

Thursday 20th November - geraniums, stair rods, snow, woodland

 My geraniums (pelargonium really) survived the frost on Monday night, but is was enough of a warning that on Tuesday we arranged all the pots - 20 of them - in shallow trays, as I had arranged with a friend to over-winter them in her conservatory. Tuesday was cold all day, and a neighbour helped BB wrap them in fleece to protect them.

On Wednesday morning, as we were just about to load the car, it started sleeting heavily. Like a rain storm, but a sleet storm, it came down like stair rods. Anyone remember what stair rods were?

Goodness me, you can buy them everywhere! I thought they were a thing of the past!

The sleet gave way to very wet snow, large wet clumps that looked as though they should make a sound midway between SPLAT and THUD when the hit the ground. 

We took the plants round in the afternoon, when everything had changed again; clear, cold bright sun. 

I'm glad we did; my weather app said it felt like -6°C outside and I believe it!

I'm embarking on another virtual journey, this time through a cutesy wood full of sweet little animals. It is themed around Thanksgiving, and I am promised features on traditional recipes and customs from around the world along the way. 

The path on my first day lead me past a happy picnic party.;

 

 Those squirrels are having a lovely time. I didn't think that there were red squirrels in USA; perhaps this is taking place in the English Lake District, or perhaps on Brownsea Island which isn't too far from us. I'll have to ask Kezzie to identify those fungi on the right; they look as though they would glow in the dark.

The next day I came to a bridge;

The blue dot, near the HH marker shows where I got to on Tuesday, and the tartan marker is Wednesday. 

The walk has suddenly grown a little scary; I've been walking at least 2200 steps each day, which means the distance from the blue dot to the tartan marker is OVER ONE MILE. 

So, just how big are those ducks? It's going to take me a couple of days to cross that bridge! I seem to have made it safely past those hedgehogs without being mistaken for a worm; what perils lie ahead, I wonder?

I'm going to count this as my scavenger hunt 'woodland' item.

Wednesday 19th November - Scavenger Hunt; Shed

Small picture,  the size of a postage stamp, doodled on a letter posted today

 Once upon a time we had a garage. It was a rickety concrete affair, and over thirty years it steadily filled up with everything, including an out of control Russian Vine. Rickety became ruinous, and it was eventually cleared and taken away, leaving just the decent concrete slab, the only sturdy part of the whole thing.

We decided to do without a garage, and replaced it with a shed, to be a small workshop and store. It looked wonderful, inside and out, for the first year.

But just as no flat surface in our house can stay clear and tidy for longer than ten minutes,  no shed of ours can stay clear and tidy for longer than ten weeks. It slowly acquired extra gardening bits, and stuff waiting to go to the tip, or to be taken for recycling,  or, dare I say, just stuff.

The obvious solution was to get anther shed... so we bought a sweet little pale blue 'sentry-box style shed, and I  moved a lot of my gardening bits and pieces, and the bird seed tubs and so forth out.

But we needed somewhere to store oxygen cylinders, starting last summer. Again,  obviously, we needed another shed!

Top row; the corner of the garage, the slab,

Middle row; building the first shed

Bottom row; the first sentry box shed and the oxygen cylinders

(Many thanks to Chris at Always Smiling for her step-by-step instructions on creating a photo collage.)

And the moral of the story is... I have no idea what the moral of the story is. It doesn't have one. It's just how our lives seem to operate. 

Tuesday 18th November - A Book At Bedtime

 This could equally well be a 'My Oxygenated Life' post; 

sooner or later, the meds you take for one symptom cause a different problem, so you need to add another packet of pills to the carrier bag full BB brings home every six weeks...

The main culprit for this new addition is long-term steroids. Several years ago, the chest clinic consultant asked if me to try reducing my dose. It's well known that taking steroids long-term is bound to affect on bone density (cue calcium and vitamin D supplements, and annual zolendronic infusions).

This has to be a careful, incremental process over several months. Sadly it wasn't long before I became so breathless that even mere walking as difficult, so I had to gradually increase the dose back up again.

Yesterday I learned that I need to add statins. It seems that steroids can cause cholesterol levels to rise; switching to Benecol etc won't be enough to lower it. I was half expecting this when Isaw the results of recent routine blood tests so it wasn'ta surprise. But then the GP pharmacist cheerily said 'it's best taken at least 30 mins before bedtime'. 

Whoa! Stop there! 

I'm blowed if I'm going to spend my whole day watching the clock until it's time to take the next pill; currently I'm already coping four different times;

7 am in the morning as I get up

2:30 pm or thereabouts, 

6.30 pm or thereabouts because this one has to be taken with food, and that's when we eat (oh, that's NOW; excuse me a moment...) 

10 pm as I go to bed. 

plus remembering to take the iron supplement at some stage in the day according to whether I have consumed, or am about to consume, dairy, wholegrains or eggs.

Now he wants me to add 9 pm as well?

We found a compromise; take the statin and other pills as soon as we go upstairs, and then read for half an hour every night after climbing into bed. In other words, I  need to read a book at bedtime. 

There, in true Ronnie Corbett shaggy dog story fashion, I've worked my way round to the title of this post!

This what Wikipedia has to say about the beginnings of the BBB radio programme 'A Book at Bedtime'

The series began on the BBC Light Programme on 31 January 1949, billed for the first week only as "Late-Night Serial",[2] with the first instalment of a 15-part reading of the John Buchan novel The Three Hostages, read by Arthur Bush.

There was a break after 29 March 1957, but the programme returned under its old title, now on the BBC Home Service, on 2 April 1962; the Home Service had in fact been broadcasting weekday evening 15-minute readings since 19 September 1960, but not under the Book at Bedtime heading.

While it's not called 'A Book at Bedtime' anymore, it is still running on Radio 4 at 10:45 pm. Other books are read through the day on Radio 4extra. Plus they are available on BBCsounds afterwards, sometimes for years.

And this brings me to my scavenger hunt item for today;

BEETHOVEN 

The theme music for 'A Book at Bedtime', back at the beginning was this charming, gentle Bagatelle by Beethoven, op 33 no 3, in F, played here by Alfred  Brendel

Monday 17th November - Speculaas

 Note the spelling; speculaas, not speculoos. I'm not sure, but the -aas version is Dutch, and -oos Belgian. I could look it up...

Anyway,  my mother was Dutch, and speculaas biscuits, (along with Droste chocolate letters, and Haagsche Hopjes, and hagelslag, and gestampte muisjes, katjes, and zouthout) were a favourite feature of Christmas. 

Hopjes

Zouthout

gestampe muisjes

Hagelslag

chocolate letter

katjes

I haven't been able to buy the right ones in England. We relied on packets brought over by relatives, along with little sachets of the spice mix. 

Most of the biscuits in the supermarkets are too crisp and snappy. I remember it as being more buttery, with a tendency to create crumbs, like thin shortbread in texture, with flaked almonds pressed into the base. 

Today I have attempted Nigella's speculaas recipe. I fell at step one; making the speculaas spice mixture. You have to make up what amounts to a spice jar full, in order to have the right combination. The rest can be stored forthe bext batch of biscuits. The first ingredient is 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. The cinnamon jar was empty.  In my search I discovered 3 jars of nutmeg, 4 of ground ginger, 3 of garlic powder, and 4 of mixed spice. Perhaps I've been over buying!

There was also a sachet of premixed speculaas which I bought a couple of years ago. The mix is wrong, but I used it anyway.

Second hurdle... I was going to make half quantities. I don't know what I was thinking of, but somehow I decided that half of 100g was 150g. (Yes, really. And me with a maths degree 'all.) I had combined 150g of butter and light brown sugar before I had a rethink...

Complicated ponderings ensued and eventually I removed 200g of the creamed butter and sugar and things then went on more or less to plan. I've now got the dough chilling overnight 'to let the flavours develop'. 

Now for the 200g butter and sugar... I had half an egg left over, which weighed 26g, so I added another egg, and 100g SR flour and cocoa powder, mixed that in and vaked it as a cake (fingers crossed.

So, I can tick off 'make biscuits' from the scavenger hunt, and add cinnamon to the shopping list. 

You should have seen the state of the kitchen after all that! All washed up now though.