Sunday 27th August - Now, what has been happening?

Let's see - last post was 10th August. I've enough for a score of posts since then - every day, it seems, except today, has been packed full.

So, I'll start with today and work backwards.

Nothing - well, almost nothing has happened. I guess the main event has been high-speed croissants for breakfast - but more of that in yesterday's post which will be coming up next.

I have learned how to crotchet - well, that started last night, after I ripped back the scarf I had been knitting while in Northern Ireland. The scarf was a failure - I was going round and round on circular needles, and when I cast off it rolled itself up into a nasty narrow snake.

I'd always thought of crochet as a Dark Art, and apart from a roundish coaster which I made in the August-of-making-something-every-day a few years back, hadn't really done anything. (I'm not counting the Tunisian Crotchet Blanket Project, which has stalled at the sewing-together phase).

And perhaps late at night, after a glass of wine, and in poor light, was a bad time to start. But, it seems to be going ok for now.

 
The peace and quiet of today has been blissful. I haven't had to talk to anyone (except BB) all day. He's had to sort out next-door's computer, (which was just checking that the neighbour next-door had got the order right for his new machine. He's finally moving off XP, which I gather is Significant.)

But apart from a few pleasantries with the other neighbour on the other side, I've had a day off "peopling". I'm beginning to feel human-ish.

Right. It will have to be new posts for the other days - too, too much for just a single news bulletin.

Monday 19th December - Christmas Cake and Christmas Pudding

Which I made several weeks ago, amazingly doing some "getting ready for Christmas".

I had hoped to make them on "Sir Up Sunday" but in the event was a week late. I also had to use grated butted instead of suet, as the contents of the half-used packet were decidedly whiffy.

Let me tell you, grated unsalted french butter makes a Fabulous substitute for suet! I'll do that again!

Oh, yes. That word "again".

I had some difficulty finding currants, and in the end we found some in Sainsburys. I made a large square Christmas cake, the plan being to cut into half, to make a rectangular cake for Christmas, and then cut the other half into two squares, one to have a test cake before Christmas, and one to save for the New Year. I also made four individual puddings rather than a single big one, again with the view of having a test pud beforehand.

The cake, and the pudding, were absolutely delicious.

Oh yes. That word "were". Which is not to imply that we ate them all up.

I've had to throw the cake and the puddings away. They were delicious, but inedible. The currants were full of gritty, stoney bits, which grated in your mouth and threatened your teeth as you ate them. We tried, honestly, we tried to convince ourselves that they would do, but it was no good.

I've made a new cake, and it is maturing nicely, and now it is time for the puddings. And I have checked ALL the ingredients for grittiness before they go into the mix.

 

Thursday 3rd November - Bleah

There are days when posting something positive is not going to happen.

Like when you've spent HOURS sorting out cover for a colleague who is signed off for several months, only to find the days whizzing past, and the work you have done being affected by unknown forces operating in alternate universes without making their presence felt until the final countdown approaches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery

In other words, it's time to throw the schedule into the air, scrumple all the post-its with messages and notes and phone numbers and reminders into the bin,

https://uk.pinterest.com/colingaudet9/throwing-paper/

 drink a LARGE GLASS of something

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_wine_closeup_in_glass.jpg

and GO TO BED.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bed_of_Ware

Which is what I will do shortly after this delicious looking meal prepared by my ever-loving husband has been consumed.

(photo to be inserted here next time he cooks it - I ate it before I could photograph it)

And if my boss phones with an explanation of the various grenades he threw through the original proposal, he may find I've gone to sleep.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_sleeping_beauty_by_John_Collier_1.jpg

Saturday 26th March - The Sliding Block Puzzle

The sacrifices I make to provide a blog post!

I've just brave the cold, grey, dank, blustery HORRIBLE weather outside to take this picture:

which is the state of the back seat of my car. Now that I am back at the computer, sitting next to a hot radiator, I will explain.

The two big black patio planters are my "junk" samba kit (there is a smaller planter inside one of them. The multi-coloured plastic tubes are "boomwhackers" - when you tap them they produce sounds of different pitches. The various bags contain shakers, tambourines, xylophones and sundry assorted instruments. All this stuff lives in the car because - well - there is nowhere else for it. (now, when we get the shed up..... things may change.....)

Anyway, the situation is that the clutch on BB's car is going, so we are not using it in order to preserve what little capability is left for the drive to the garage on Tuesday. So that means we will have to use my car. That's fine, except both offsprings are staying here over Easter, so we will need to fit four into my car. Usually, when we need to empty my car, we just dump everything in the back bedroom - but there is a daughter in there at the moment. Or the little front bedroom - but that is already occupied by the son. Or, if it was just for a day, in the sitting room - but I can't cope with falling over it for a whole Bank Holiday weekend.

Solution - BB is currently, as I type, loading it all into his car, which, let's face it, is little more than a stationary wheeled shed at the moment. On Tuesday we can transfer it all to a vacated bedroom. By the time term starts again, it can all go back in my car.

Perhaps we will need two sheds - a musical shed and a gardening shed? And a third, to be a workshop?

Wednesday 15th October - Time off

It's been a while since the last post - three weeks?

Well, it was about three weeks ago that I started a coughing sort of cold, which meant interrupted nights, which meant that come the evening I tended to just sit about half asleep, which meant that I really didn't feel like blogging.

It's an occupational hazard of being a primary school teacher, and a music teacher at that. I reckon to pick up some kind of lurgy in the first month.

I took a couple of mornings off work last week, to see if that would do the trick. It sort of worked, but after this morning's teaching I decided to take the rest of the week off - at least as far as thrashing round the country from one school to another, and rallying classes of children to embrace their ukuleles rather than use them as pretend weapons, and wrangling enthusiastic young samba bands into some kind of coherence goes.

So, today, after a couple of instrumental lessons, and a visit to another school en route in order to follow up some missing keyboards, I came home, had a cup of coffee, and cancelled the rest of the week. It's likely I have a bit of a chest infection - just enough to make my legs slightly wobbly, and my head slightly hot. In the old days I would have taken a super-max aspirin and got on with things. These days, the chest specialist has given me a course of antibiotics to keep at the ready and told me that if I think I have a chest infection, I should START taking them and STOP working. And who am I to argue with the specialist? I've done well, though - nearly six weeks into term before the first chest infection (to which I am depressingly prone).

I do feel a bit of a fraud - not "properly" ill. But experience has told me that I won't get better unless I do exactly that. Now's my chance to actually READ some of the books I've loaded onto my Kindle, and catch up on sleep, and generally flop about for a few days.

Wednesday 14th May - An Acceptable Gift

I saw this box of assorted sticky notes in a bookshop today and knew someone could probably use them at the moment...

His time-manager was briefly retired when he retired at the end of March, but is now back in service as we deal with various family events, and he also project manages the planned (and necessary!) refurbishments for our house...

It did make him laugh. Just as well!

Friday 8th June - The Lawnmower - chapter 3

A real-time post - the events as they are happening.

It's still broken. You never got to hear chapter 2, nor see the photos, because one can't blog about EVERYTHING. There has to be a stop point, some when, usually around bedtime. (Last night it was when it became clear that Someone was going to have to cook something for supper NOW. Right Now.)

The lawnmower started sounding sick last Summer, if one wanted to be brutally honest. In fact, last Autumn might have been a good time to sort things out, but it went into the lawn-mower-sized space in the garage and stayed there. Out of sight, out of mind. Life moves on. Harvest. Christmas. New Year. Cold January. Miserable February. Easter.

Aaargh! Summer! Grass growing and mowing! Chapter 1 of the saga is here; worth pursuing only for the sound clip of the horrible noise it was making - the mower's website obligingly has recordings of sick lawnmowers.    http://www.briggsandstratton.com/support/frequently-asked-questions/Why%20is%20my%20new%20engine%20hunting%20and%20surging/

Chapter 2 happened after the first box of bits was delivered from the mower website; a diaphragm, I believe - I know several places where you might find a diaphragm (one is constantly trying to use it properly when singing, and the ones on our ancient Mission loudspeakers are perishing) but I hadn't realised that lawnmowers also had them. Son and father "enjoyed" some bonding time in the sun over the Jubilee weekend, and the result was that half the back lawn got mowed before the next bit broke.

Chapter 3 began with sound of someone drilling out pop-rivets in the kitchen; beleive you me this is a noise from hell, causing exquisite distress to anyone who had been enjoying a quiet morning in the sitting room. This was followed some time later by a short burst of mowing, thanks to the fitment of a new carburettor. The activity was short lived; the mower wants more attention (it is very needy, making up for all the years of neglect, I suppose.)

I am half hoping that mowing might be over for the season. Our front "lawn" looks really pretty to my eyes; buttercups and "granny-pop-out-of-bed" (plantains) and coltsfoot and clover and tall, wavy grasses and vetches and things I don't know the name of. It is quite a contrast to our neighbours' patch; they are keen gardeners and are out there mowing and clipping and edging and weeding and deadheading at every opportunity.


I'm glad I took the photo of the meadow before I started typing. After the first three swathes of grass were reduced to stubble, the mower temporarily packed up, but its going again now. Don't know whether to be glad or sorry. Reckon the neighbours will pleased, though.



Postscript; In spite of all the lawnmower's desperate attempts to avoid the work, it has been coerced into starting enough times to start the job (leaking o-ring - at least that's only pence, not punds, but requires a major disassembly). It won in the end; I'm sure it deliberately hurled itself at a lump of something or other buried in the long grass at the bottom of the garden - clunk! thunk! and that's that. Husband has appeared, hot and cross and needing a cup of tea. Lawnmower wrangling is not his favourite activity.

May 27th - Sunday - grrr

If goose-grass - cleavers - Robin-run-the-hedge - were a crop that I could harvest and consume, I would be giving thanks for its abundance.

If dandelion seeds could be eaten, drunk, smoked, sold, I would be rich.

But they are not.

So I am neither giving thanks for them, nor am I rich. I'm just having a moan before I take the battle to the flowerbeds AGAIN.

I do this every year. You would have thought they'd get the message that they are not welcome by now.

Saturday 21st April - Pay Claim Creation Day

Unfortunately, as an hourly-paid teacher, I don't get paid to create my pay claims.

Sigh.

So, I shall be spending the next hour collecting the petrol receipts and registers, working out the mileages and getting it all together.

Heigh ho. The bottom line is that I am very fortunate to have a job, and to have one that I enjoy so much. Well, that I enjoy a lot of the time.

These are some of the items that never make it onto the Pay Claims;

For searching through the internet and my selection of song books for new songs to teach - no charge.
For writing out sheets of music for the children to take home and practise - no charge.
For arranging extra recorder parts/keyboard parts for the songs - no charge.
For staying late to talk over some of the issues and work out strategies to deal with them - no charge.
For staying late so that Amelia/George/Ellie/Fred (names have been changed) could show me how well (or how badly!) they can play "London's Burning" or "Greensleeves" or "Fur Elise" - no charge.
 
I might moan about the amount of (unpaid) time I spend on that type of work. However, it is more than made up for by the privilege of seeing how music lessons can transform the lives of the children. Every week, I will see some, or even all, of the following types of events;

The child who has a reputation for being disruptive and aggressive, settling down with determination to master the horrid intricacies of "Jingle bells", and the look of pure pleasure when they achieve it.

The child who is usually too shy to speak, standing before the class while we all play the tune that they have composed.

The child who is so dyslexic that they have lost all confidence in reading and writing discovering that they can read and play music notation.

The child who has always been a "groaner" (I know we aren't supposed to use that word anymore!) finding their "singing voice" and singing in tune.

The child who is bottom of the class for reading, writing, number work, discovering that they are a "natural" for the clarinet and the best in class for a change.

Moan over. I am very fortunate indeed!

To do list for week commencing Monday 9th April

Monday 9th April - Second week of the holidays

This week's list and the lack of any progress is depressing that I have deleted it. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting a week's worth of music practise done on Sunday, the charity shop will be closed so I can't get rid of the bags. I haven't done any gardening - no - wait - I repotted the lettuce seedlings! I did attack the laundry  mountain and filled the wardrobe to over flowing, but now I have put two loads through the washing machine, so back to square one.

I don't "do" failure. So I have deleted the list. Hah!

Term starts on Monday and nothing gets done in term time except Work. There will be no rest, no play, until Bank holiday in May.

Monday Evening - Rubbish television, so do something useful

Every room in our house, except possibly the bathroom, has to fulfil at least two and sometimes far too many functions. Bedrooms also double as studies, the kitchen is also the laundry and the place where the cats sleep at night; the hall is a boot room and storage space for various musical instruments. We do more than sit in the sitting-room - it's where we eat most meals as well, and that's because the so-called dining room is also the music room and my study. 

Eating off the dining table is usually an impossibility - because it usually looks like this:

I challenged myself to get the table cleared in the time it takes to listen to one CD, as there was nothing to watch on television, and  have to say that the sate of the dining room was beginning to get me down. It actually took the whole of Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite" and also Steeleye Span's "All around my hat" to get the table cleared as far as this;

which is a starling improvement. However, twenty-four hours later, there is a risk that this state of affairs may be all too temporary, unless I stir myself to clear away everything that has landed back on the table top already.

The next challenge is the glory hole beside the piano. It is a good thing that Ofsted has not managed to insinuate its tentacles into the realm of private music teachers as I would fail at the first hurdle for simply having an untidy house. I reckon it will take the length of the complete unaccompanied cello suites of Bach to get this lot sorted.

Sautrdya 25th Ferurya

And athoer thng. I dsn't mttr how many tims I go thrhgh adn chek the potst thre is alwyz anthr tyop org wrng: pn. untn mrk wich ive' mssd. Sigh