Wednesday 29th April - Sound, and Noise

This morning was sparkling star to the day. As the sun rises over the front of the house, the light travels down slowly from the tops of the trees at the bottom of the garden to the roots, and then up towards the back of the house by the afternoon.

At about 8 am I opened the back door and looked out, and was literally dazzled by the combination of bright blue sky and vivid green leaves all flickering in the fresh sharp breeze. From a tree in another garden a little further along there was the most tremendous noise. Several dozen starlings were jostling and bustling about, all continuously commenting on everything.   

They kept up this racket - I couldn't possibly call it birdsong - all day. I've just discovered that while a flock of starlings in flight is a 'murmuration', another collective noun is a 'chattering' of starlings.

I watched the starlings for a little while later in the day. I think it was a 'first flight' day for this year's broods, as the birds were making longer flights between the fences separating the gardens. Perhaps the starlings weren't arguing, but doing the equivalent of shouting 'watch me!' 'Did you see that?' 'Look, I'm going to the next tree!' and so on to each other, like excited children on a climbing frame.

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Now follows a rant about background music.....

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I'm slowly reading Sara Maitland's book 'On Silence' which is about her searching for, and investigations about silence. I suspect that true silence is impossible to find, except in carefully, scientifically constructed chambers. She describes a lot of her experiences of solitude, a different thing altogether. I think the nearest we can get to silence in normal life is the reduction, maybe elimination of what I think of as deliberately added extra noise. 

Now, if you wanted some background music while you read my rantings, how about Elgar, Chanson du matin? Or just skip the rant and go straight to the music?

                 

TV programmes, I'm looking at you... I've given up watching favourites like 'The Repair Shop', and others such as 'The Great British Bakeoff' and 'Masterchef' are on notice. They have incessant background music - no, all it 'muzak'. 

Are they mending clocks? Cue tick-tock style music. Cut to person mending a teddy bear and we abruptly switch to a music box waltz. Here's someone mending a military cap and guess what, our ears and brain now have to assimilate a brass band march, faded down during the voice over, increased in volume while the presenter takes a breath and faded down for the next sentence.

Cooking - there are separate jingles for announcing the challenge, for beginning to cook, for approaching the judging time, for standing waiting for the verdict... you don't have to watch to know exactly what's happening.

I've nearly reached the end of this rant - I was dismayed to hear background music exploding into the short gaps between items in the radio programme about statistics in the news called 'More or Less'. Totally unnecessary.     

And finally; 'The Enchanted April' by Elizabeth von Armin is being seralised on the radio at the moment. It's such a lovely, lovely book. I've read it twice, and I'm enjoying the episode on the radio, but, but, but... as the reader reads the description of Lottie's first morning waking up in the castle in Italy, there is also a gorgeous piece of violin music, which exactly fits the mood and description. Except that I cannot concentrate on the words, and build the picture in my mind, and listen to the music all at the same time. My castle and the terraced gardens and view all crumbled to dust... still, I had the music to listen to!

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Monday 27th April - in the garden all day

 It has been another lovely sunny day. I even took off my cardigan! We were both outside all day, having meetings...

Our architect came over, and we sat outside in the dappled shade of the apple tree at the bottom of the garden to go over plans and next steps. At the same time the building company's surveyor was doing the very detailed measurements which will provide the very detailed plans for the groundworks. He had set up his 'workstation' on the patio table up near the house. BB set up the parasol for him as the sun was now properly sunny.

Having both architect and surveyor at the same time proved a good move as they could settle a lot of questions between them straight away. Then fence between us and our neighbours gas not yet been replaced after their similar extension was done last summer.  We get on very well, and we had permission to nip through and check on how various details such as manhole covers and drains were dealt with, which the surveyor found helpful.

They left shortly after 3, and we had lunch - yes, lunch! - at about quarter past! I hadn't managed to get it ready for us to eat before they turned up just before 1pm. My, but we were hungry!  I'd already cooked the sausages, and defrosted some chunky vegetable and tomato sauce, so I nipped into the kitchen to put plates into the oven to heat and make a start on cooking pasta while they were packing up their bags. It didn't take long, and we sat outside in the shade of the parasol to eat.

And then it was supper time... or would have been... but the day was so scrambled. We had a snack much later.

Three events, then.

A shower, and two meetings. And a lot of fresh air.

Dvorăk, Sillouettes op8 no 11 in A major. Played by Claudio Columbo.

Sunday 26th April - what a beautiful day...

In the garden after lunch; 

I'm trying to avoid what I think of as 'work' on Sundays... that's roughly defined as 'anything I don't want to do, that doesn't need to be done today'. It's working well so far. 

After lunch (salmon en papilotte cooked in the air fryer with boiled potatoes tossed in a little butter, and spinach, followed by banana custard, should you be interested) I took my coffee and knitting into the garden and sat on the bench for nearly an hour. The chuntering of the oxygen concentrator was muted to a background rumble so it felt closer to silence than it does indoors. Instead I could hear the little solar fountain, and birdsong, and the clap of pigeon wings as they flopped onto a branch. 

It was almost as if I could hear the whole garden relaxing, expanded, growing. It felt as though if I listened carefully enough I would hear the leaves growing, and the sound of the ants and beetles scurrying across the patio.

Here's another prayer from the Angela Ashwin book of 1000 prayers from our last home-group meeting;

I hope you have a good week.

Saturday 25th April - three events per day

 Aiming to schedule just three events per day is working fairly well. Also, recognising that a day of action may well require an easy following day is helpful. 

So Thursday - having a shower, a chatty social/piano lesson zoom, and home-group zoom were the three events.

Quite a lot of knitting and thinking about the cardigan too; deciding which ball of yarn to use where to spread the colours to best effect, and thinking about how to manage the sleeves and ribbing, as I'm using a thinner yarn so have to calculate how many stitches I'll be needing.

So Friday was meant to be a gentle day, and so it was. Just one event, an afternoon outing; our little home-group zoom, just the five of us, met for a communion service followed by tea and cake in the garden of the of the group.

We sat at a table in a shady corner with a trickling fountain nearby, surrounded by trees, plants, birds. We said the familiar prayers and shared bread and wine. It was such special time; for many reasons this was only the third or fourth time I have been able to receive communion since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. 

We were all given a little sprig of the olive tree to take home as a memento

Now it's Saturday afternoon. I spent the morning going through some of paperwork from last year, shredding, recycling and throwing out things I (hope I) no longer need from dealing with probate and all the other stuff. Don't worry, I kept all the financial files!

This all started because I wanted to try and clear my little work table. BB's been given a Book Nook model to make up, so he needs the space on the dining room table, which meant tidying my side, which meant making space for more files on my bookshelves, which meant I was precipitated into a mega sort out. Long overdue, and well worth doing.

I never did get to sit at my desk today after all that!

Sussex in April, in Spring, is so quintessentially English; so here is Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis 

Wednesday 23rd April - Carrots. Wedding Ring. etc

 

Batch cooking has happened. A crock-pot full of carrot soup made about 6 portions for suppers, and a tray of minced beef, vegetables and beans made another 8 portions for lunches. The freezer is now bulging; we'll have to do a freezer inventory soon.

BB walked into town yesterday to the jewellers, and left his ring with them. They are going to cut a chunk out of it, so hopefully we've played the last game of 'hunt the wedding ring'.

I'm knitting along my experimental cardigan. So far I've finished three of the five strips that will make the back. Hooray, hooray! I ordered another ball of Sirdar Jewelspun chunky in what I hoped would be a toning shade, and a slightly shorter set of 6.5mm needles. The yarn is perfect, and the new needles are So Much Better. 

I'm pulling the yarn from the centre of the current ball, and all was going well until this happened;

Instead of a length of yarn I pulled out a tangled knot! (Looking too much like intestines for my liking) 

I just had to practise patience as I unravelled it. Then, of course I was left with yards of wool... nothing for it but to knit and knit until it was tidied up into several dozen rows of mock rib!

Tuesday 21st April - hunt the...

 This was one of my favourite books;

When I was little, Parties had already begun to change. Girls had party dresses, but I'm not sure the boys wore ties. 

We did play all the party games; oranges and lemons, blind man's buff, and hunt the thimble;

It took me a surprisingly long time to spot the thimble in the picture.

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So what's this bit of nostalgia all about? Well, it's becoming a bit of a habit; BB unpacks the grocery delivery, comes back into the sitting room and then suddenly stops an announces 'I've lost my wedding ring again'.

After an anxious half hour we found it in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. His ring seems to have developed a bit of an affinity for potatoes. 

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And breathe.