Friday/Saturday 23/24 January - discombobulations and surprises

 Yesterday and today was were full of them.

 Yesterday was dentist day. Dentist afternoon, really, but it seemed to affect the whole day. 

It takes us 45 - 60 minutes to drive to the dentist  normally,  but BB had driven through heavy rain, half-flooded roads and three sets of roadworks for an emergency appointment on Wednesday and it had taken heading for 90 minutes. (He'd broken another crown on Tuesday, did I already say?).

So we allowed extra time, and found the rain had stopped, and the puddles had drained away, and only one of the roadworks caused any delays. We were half an hour early. 

Meanwhile we'd had a light lunch, just a toasted cheese sandwich, at 11.30 instead of a main meal around 1. It felt... weird. Are we getting too set in our ways?

The new hygienist obviously decided I was a fragile invalid and I was treated to the most delicate and gentle experience ever... not what I'd been expecting after my son had described her as having done an 'industrial level cleaning' when he went some months ago.

'You'll be fine,' I said to BB, based on my experience, as we waited for his turn. Half an hour later he emerged her the room  looking... well, looking as though he'd just undergone the industrial version. It's not that she's rough or hurts you or anything, but she was very, very, very thorough! Give me the delicate version every time!

I also had a checkup. The dentist has a new gadget, and scanned my teeth in such a way as to be able to display a 3-D image of what looked a set of false teeth on a screen. I have never seen such a set of crooked teeth, all overlapping and leaning against one another at crazy angles. Were they really mine? I suppose they must be!

We came home,  starving, and had a main meal at about 5 instead of light supper at 6. All - just - weird. Again. 

Still, that's me done and dusted for 6 months. BB is back next week for the crown. Or maybe a different one, I think there is an earlier replacement crown still to be finished.  I lose track.

Today has been blissfully quiet and uneventful, and all the meals happened as normal.

Apart from one major, important, joyful cause for celebration. BB's wedding ring slipped off his finger AGAIN about two weeks ago, and we had resigned ourselves to its loss. 

But this morning as I rummaged through the vegetable drawer in search of baking potatoes,  there, at the very back, was a glint of gold...

We rejoiced.

'

Wednesday and Thursday 21st and 22nd January - John Craske, 2by2 stitching, Yo-Yo-and Yeou-Cheng Mar

 I'm finding it easier to blog every other day at the moment - I don't know if that will remain the case, or if I will manage to raise my energy levels at some point (when it stops raining, perhaps?)

Meanwhile - 

I confess - we watch an episode (or maybe two) of 'Antiques Roadtrip' most evenings during the week. Not the ones with celebrities, only the ones with the two antiques experts driving around from shop to shop in a classic car. The really interesting snippets are when they go off and visit a museum or stately home, and we get a five-ten minute nugget about a place or person or event.

Yesterday one of them went to see an exhibition of art by Norfolk fisherman John Craske (1881 - 1943). He seems to have been ill for most of his life, and when he could no longer go out to sea, started painting instead. When he was so ill he had to stay in bed, he turned his hand to creating embroidery pictures.    

He was almost completely unknown in his lifetime, which is a great pity because the paintings and embroideries are astonishingly good.

I expect Ang has seen his work at the Norwich museum.

Then, today's 'Persephone Post' item was - John Craske! 

The short entry for today mentioned this book which is going straight onto my 'Wantables' list. It looks like being exactly the kind of non-fiction book I like - rambling around the subject, taking a wider panoramic view. 

In other news - as I thought, I haven't quite finished the 2By2 two stitching (not due until 14th February!) because, after letting it lie for a day I decided to add a little bit more...

Ang and I have been wondering about these little squares. The orginal plan had been for another book cover, but then Ang blogged about 'the analogue bag'. That set me thinking. What I fancied was a small 'grab-and-go' bag with a couple of small simple craft projects inside, all complete and ready to go. My sock knitting bag is one such 'grab-and-go'. Maybe also a small lightweight book to read - poetry would be good, or quotations, or extracts from books just a few paragraphs long. Things I wouldn't mind reading several times over, and that really don't take long and can be easily interrupted. 

I do a fair bit of hanging around in waiting rooms and so forth (for example at the dentist tomorrow, when we both have inspections and sessions with the hygienist) so a 'grab-and-go' bag would be ideal for these kind of occasions. 

The upshot is that Ang and I are going to make up the squares not as book covers, but as project bags, and mine will become a 'grab-and-go' bag of pick-up-able and put-down-able things to read or make. It took a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing but Ang has come up with a pattern. 

Watch this space - as they say!

And yet another thing - I saw this today...

 

Leonard Bernstein introduces 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma and his 11-year-old sister Yeou-Cheng Ma to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower at "An American Pageant of the Arts," on November 29, 1962. The purpose of the event was to raise funds for the National Cultural Center, begun under Eisenhower's administration and encouraged under Kennedy's. The prodigious duo performed the first movement of the Concertino No. 3 in A Major, by Jean-Baptiste Breval. Two months after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law legislation renaming the National Cultural Center as a "living memorial" to John F. Kennedy.

Monday and Tuesday 19th and 20th January - obsessed

Monday wasn't my best day day. I started reading the forms to be filled in for selling my father’s flat. 

'There is nothing so easy that but that it becomes difficult when you try to do it' said Pythagorus. I wonder what theorem he was trying to prove.

Or

"Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”
 Spoken by Casca Act 1 of Julius Caesar

In other words I ground to a halt, had a meltdown, followed by a calming cup of coffee. Not my finest hour!

I got stuck into 2By2 stitching instead! Now, this was a different story. I spent Monday afternoon and all of Tuesday snipping and stitching. Monday saw my practice piece completed, and tonight I've finished the real piece! I'll let them lie for a few days and then see if I really have finished them. It will take me a while to clear up the chaos. 

Otherwise life has carried on, fitting in around the gaps in the sewing. I made what I consider to ge a lazy lunch; pasta with frozen veg added towards the end of the cooking time, and meatballs from the freezer, defrosted in the microwave and served with tomato sauce from a Lloyd Grossman jar. Minimal effort, but tasted good. 

I've cut off the dead flowers from amaryllis number 1, 

Amaryllis number 2 is growing day by day.

I'm still doing the balletbasedmovement exercises; that's two weeks and two days I've kept going. Will I get to the end of the month? 

Sunday 18th January - Sunday Morning

 Anna Lapwood;

You may be more familiar with this;

It's 'Sunday Morning', the third of the Sea Interludes composed by Benjamin Britten for his opera Peter Grimes.

I found myself in a fever to get out - to walk in fresh air, and see what was growing in the gardens in our nearby streets. 

As we slowly walked up the road towards the duck pond I heard the single bell in the church half a mile away, shortly joined by the sound of the full peal from the main church in town another mile further away. 

The church family has been a big part of our lives for over 30 years now. When my family all lived so far away so that we only net up a few times a year, the church family felt like an extra set of cousins, aunts and uncles, closer at hand.

Friday and Saturday 16th/17th January - 2By2

Ang has posted this month's completed stitching already, here and here, but here it all is again;

Hers

And mine;

So I now have these to add to my collection 

I had a little chuckle when I opened the package (thank you for the chocolates!) because for a while I was considering doing a snowflake for my stitching...

We're doing the last ones now, to meet a date of 14th February. As Ang said, it's our game so we can set the rules! After that it's a matter of making up the book covers and adding the 'rubric', we've always signed and dated the pieces.

And planning the next collaboration?!? I do hope so...

Meanwhile while, what am I going to do for the last bit of stitching?

Bach Prelude and Fugue in F major, from Book 1 of the 48 BWV 856

I love the way she manages to separate the three voices of the fugue on the harpsichord in spite of the fact that harpsichords only play at one dynamic unless you change the stops for the entire keyboard. On a piano you bring out a voice by playing it louder and the others softer.

Rather in the way one desperately wants to make a pot of tea or a coffee when the power goes off, I woke up yesterday wanting to play the piano, In my half awake state I chose this piece, purely at random. I don't think I've ever looked at it before, but I knew I had the music.

But the cut on my thumb is exactly where my thumb would strike the piano keys...

But (again!) I have a digital harpsichord as well as a piano! The keys are significantly lighter, and I've been fine, so able to make a start on the prelude. It's trapper than it looks, but easier than it sounds.

Thursday 15th January - teaching day

Firstly I taught a piano lesson. It was a really interesting lesson, and I might post it as a super-simple playalong. It was about recognising patterns, to reduce the effort and increase the speed and ease of learning,  something experienced players do without noticing, but something only one of my four childhood teachers ever showed me. Maybe the others had never discovered this?

Then, I was starting to cook lunch when, in a moment's lapse of concentration,  I cut my thumb. Everything stopped while we sorted it out, and then I taught BB how to cook our favourite fish dish;

Tray Bake fish for 2;

Step 1; oven 180°C, assembled medium sized roasting dish, a couple of peppers (one red, one yellow today), a smallish  onion, a handful of cherry tomatoes, however much potato you want to eat - I prefer waxy or salad potatoes - and fish- I've tended to use salmon, sea bream or sea bass fillets.

Leave the fish alone for now; prep and chunk the veg, eg quarter the onion, slice peppers into 6 or 8, cut potatoes  - peeled or unpeeled - into thick rounds.

Step 2 

Into the roasting pan - mine's non-stick - poor a generous tablespoon of oil, season with pepper, salt, chopped or dried garlic, mixed or fresh herbs or both, a few chilli flakes if you like, and 'rubble' it all together. Chuck in all the veg including the tomatoes, stir it all around, bake for 15 mins.

Step 3

Remove the tray, stir everything around and put it back for 15 mins

Unpack the fish, dry, season with a little salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or even a generous dash of interesting vinaigrette dressing 

Step 4

Remove the tray, stir everything around. Clear a space in the middle and put the fish in, skin side down. Put the tray back in the over for 7-10 mins depending on the thickness of the fish.

Step 5 

Remove the tray,  check the fish and serve! We like the flavour,  and we like the lack of clearing up, and we like the lack of fried fishy fat smell! Win, win win!

....

I've been taking it easy the rest of the day, avoiding using my thumb as the cut is near the knuckle. So no knitting, sewing, washing, clearing... plenty of reading, drinking tea, and a moderate amount of biscuit eating...

....

A friend has just come round with a bunch of tightly closed daffodils, the first of the year. Perfect timing, as last week's tulips are nearly over!