Friday 3rd March - dropping posts like stitches and World Day of Prayer

 I don't know what's happening to me this week - it seems as though anytime I'm not doing something (something timetabled and unavoidable, that is) I'm doing nothing. I do sit and knit, as being an almost zero-energy, zero-thinking activity, and much to be preferred to suduko and solitaire on the computer, but then I have to pause from time to time and play 'hunt the dropped stitch'...  

Anyhow, I have ended up at my computer so I am rattling in a blog post while I wait to see if my attempts to 'save the day' for a friend are successful. She is due to play the piano for the evening 'World Day of Prayer' in about half an hour, and one of the hymn tunes is proving elusive. 

The 'World Day of Prayer', previously 'Women'd World Day of Prayer' takes place on the first Friday in March. In our local area there has been a morning service, and afternoon service, and now an evening service. I used to play for it regularly when I was active on the committee. I made it to the 2020 service  and then I had to drop out. I'm still 'dropped out' as I am still (yawn, it's becoming Very Tedious) shielding since middle of March 2020. So this is nearly the end of the third year. Will this shielding ever come to an end? Of course it will.

The WDoP service is put together by the ladies of a different country each year - this time Taiwan. Poor Taiwan, always watching China and hoping that what is happening between Ukraine and Russia doesn't happen to them. One challenge every year, musically speaking, is hunting down the music for the various hymns. 

But we always finish with 'The day thou gavest' - very appropriate, as the services are held right around the globe. As we are finishing our evening service tonight, no doubt the people in the Americas will be preparing for theirs. 

When you read the 2nd, 3rd and 4th verses the choice of hymn makes perfect sense.

The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended
The darkness falls at Thy behest
To thee our morning hymns ascended
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest

We thank thee that thy church, unsleeping
While earth rolls onward into light
Through all the world her watch is keeping
And rests not now by day or night

As over each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day
The voice of prayer is never silent
Nor dies the strain of praise away

The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren 'neath the western sky
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high

So be it, Lord, thy throne shall never
Like earth's proud empires, pass away
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever
Till all thy creatures own thy sway

Friday 4th March - Supercilious Sheep

 Today's window - or should it be a hatch, I wonder in my Noah's Ark is of the most supercilious sheep I have seen in a while.

 Sheep in the plural - they both look remarkably stupid. Which is not surprising when I looked up the accompanying Bible verse;

For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

My class at school was regularly made to sing the verse 'Perverse and foolish oft I strayed' in hymn practice by ourselves as a punishment for chatting instead of obediently singing like the 'good' pupils. The only thing worse than this was to be made to sing the verse in a small group, or maybe by yourself. 

(the rest of the verse draws to a happy ending, which was not always the case with hymn practice).

It is the annual World Day of Prayer today - friends went to the service (the church was packed!) and brought back the service booklet for me, and a packet of seeds which has handed to everyone. I shall read through the service tonight and discover what the seeds are about.

The box with the Postcard Project arrived today - Ang has made an amazing 'stamp', sewn to the postcard, The camera on my phone is not cooperating so no picture yet... (I'm hoping it just wants charging or restarting or something).

There were also a couple of pieces of cloth for me to practice on - I mentioned that I was looking for some. I spent the afternoon unpicking the part-completed stitching on the tray cloth, and then washing both pieces in very hot -  ow! ow! ow! - water and Shout! stain remover. My hands have never been so clean! The outlines have lifted from the tray cloth and faded from the other piece, so now I can think about how to arrange the practice stitching.

before washing

after washing (I've turned the smaller piece over)

Music!

I've started playing again! I'm teaching a student to play the Bach Fantasia in C minor

I was trying to demonstrate how it would sound on a harpsichord (I have a Roland digital harpsichord)

 so I swept the accumulated dust off the keyboard and onto the floor - and discovered that I was completely at sea! The keyboard is much shorter than a piano keyboard and I couldn't find my way around. 

So I have promised to learn the first 16 bars by her next lesson on Tuesday. I will be playing it at a far more sedate speed than the recording! My main problem is that I will have to memorise great chunks as I don't have time to look at the music and focus on the notes through the correct part of my varifocals and then look down to the keyboard and find the keys through a different part of the lens. I've been searching for a solution to this problem for years, trying different lenses, glasses, bifocals, reading glasses, everything. 

I've been working on this piece for two days using every trick that I know, including colour-coding the different sections, and I've got the first 12 bars moderately secure. Four more to go, and then try and put the sections together. It's a challenge!

Aha! Panic over - the phone was too flat to operate the camera. All's well. I give you... 'the Queen'

Sunday 8th March - Weekly Round-up

Now, can I remember all that happened this week?

about the cats;

Leo hs become increasingly talkative. She's 17 years old now, and has suddenly found her voice. She makes her wishes clear through a mixture of miaows, squeaks, grumbles and purrs when she finally gets what she wants (usually Himself's lap). She is liable to come in, soaking wet from the rain, and tell him all about it. Wetly. Leaving footprints every where.

McCavity has been getting thinner and thinner recently. We were beginning to worry, but the other day she managed to deposit a hair ball the size of a medium sized mouse on the back door step. Outside the back door, I'm glad to say. Since then she seems to be putting a bit of flesh on her bones.

I shall have to cut their claws again - both cats make clicking noises as they walk across the wood floors.

I met up with my friends mid-week for our usual drink-tea-eat-cake-and-natter evening. We crocheted another dozen sisal bookmarks for the World Day of Prayer service later in the week (see below!) and I also had another go at painting 'carrot people';

I'm astonished that the method actually produces effective results!

It's a bit ridiculous when I roll up to a school wondering if any pupils will be absent... but at the minute all moments of rest are gratefully appreciated... this week there were five absent for various reasons, plus one school asked me to finish their class sessions half an hour early. Reasons for absence? Rain (he cycles to his lesson, and doesn't come if he would get totally drenched), lurgies, exams, and the school was having a class assembly. On the down side, a different school had a World Book Day Assembly - 'we'll only be 20 minutes' - which over-ran, so I will have to go back some other time to make up the lessons I missed. Oh Well.

It was the World Day of Prayer on Friday; I went to the morning service in a small village church nearby, and took copious notes or the evening service that we were hosting at our church later on.

Afterwards I managed to borrow the candles, and a Zimbabwean flag, and gather all the spare note cards and pencils left over from writing promises during the service to take them back to our church for the evening service. We had a much simpler affair, but still well-attended. In a fit of grumpiness back in September when I agreed to take on the service, I changed the start time from 7.30 to7pm. Why? I don't know. I suspect I might just have been making some kind of point.

I've been 'on the committee' for too many years now - I only joined as a temporary measure until I could find someone 'more suitable' when the previous church rep had to stand down. I find the whole thing extraordinarily draining, even when our church isn't hosting the service. It all hangs over me like a bit of a cloud throughout November, December, January, February and the beginning of March, when I am prone to bouts of chest infections, and, this year, dealing with my God-mother's affairs as well! Every year I say 'no more'...  and 'never again'...

Actually it was a good evening. Only two ladies came at the old time of 7.30, halfway through, and we were cleared up and away and back in our own homes by 9pm. The services have become more elaborate over the years; when I was first involved we just had the words and the songs. Now there are 'interactive' bits, reflecting the custome of the country that put the service together - Zimbabwe this year. Offering cups of water on arrive, haing a display of traditional Zimbabwean food and flowers and musical instruments, writing committments to serve the community, and giving everyone a sisal bookmark as they leave. I've now got a couple of bags of spare service sheets, and half a dozen sisal bookmarks, and all the left-over pencils and note cards to rehome and recycle and a flag to return to its rightful owner. I've managed to pass the candles back already.

.

I had Another Duvet Day on Sunday - what joy! I spent the time reading, and watching more drawing tutorials on youtube. Mainly the Johanna Basford 'Inky Art' series; how to doodle fish

and how to create a fishy scene. From other sites I followed 'how to create a daisy border in your bullet journal (I don't do bullet journals) and also followed up something on 'Zentangles', on the right hand page.

Ah well. My first pupil tomorrow can't come, so I will have a more lesiurely start to the day - maybe clear the dining room table before I start teaching? Bed time now, anyway. 

Sunday 23rd February - Back to work tomorrow

Halfterm is just about over. Another couple of hours until bedtime, and then...

wakey wakey, rise and shine



So, what about this halfterm? What happened? I feel as though I have been turned inside-out and upside down!

Saturday 15th 

Met up with friends for a low-key 'hen do', I suppose you could call it - we all had breakfast together at a local eatery. I then spent some time having a look around the wool shop (yes, I bought yarn, no, I'm not posting any pictures yet).

Sunday 16th

I have a feeling this was a lull before the frenzy of the rest of half term. I've no pictures on my phone to remind me  Looking through my sketch book I've found pages like these - I discovered a free on-line brush-pen calligraphy tutorial which is so simple even I can manage it, even at the end of the day. Instead of winding down with a couple of suduko grids at bedtime, I fill a page or two with 'pot-hooks'. I'm up to drawing the letter 'o' now, surprisingly complicated and needing concentration to get right.

Monday 17th 

The writing on the page above refers to a 'draw your day' idea; this is a drawing of Monday.
Lazy morning in bed, surfing youtube for tutorials on how to join granny squares together, and also making a few granny squares to practice with before I start on the real ones. Watching the stream behind the house come up and overflow the footpath and cycle track, until it was a broad rushing torrent of water. Copying tutorials on doodling flowers and leaves.

Tuesday 18th

House clearing. Keep or chuck or charity shop. Keep or chuck or charity shop. We came back with bags and crates of stuff - it is uch more tiring going through everything than I thought. The hardest part is dealing with things that my god-mother held dear, but that I have no affinity with, nor any desire to own.

 One of the items of clothing was the sweater on the front cover of this book - such skill. But it wasn't possible to get it into a good enough state to recycle, not even as a cushion cover. Nowhere for it to go but out.

Wednesday 19th

Going through bags and bags of clothing. Charity shop or chuck. In the end, ruthlessness took over, and the heaps of clothes were reduced to one bag of spectacles, one bag of bits and pieces, one load of clothes through the wash to go to charity, and four bags for recycling at the tip. They have a textile bank.

Going to meet with friends in the evening for our regular tea and cake and set-the-world-to-rights was a reward for the labours.

Thursday 20th

Back to my god-mother's house. To see the estate agent to sign paperwork, to the housing estate office to sign paperwork. To her bank to sign paperwork. To her house to scope out the next phase of house clearing.

Everything in the house sits on a green hand crocheted mat. There are dozens of them. Keep, sell, charity shop? Keep sell, charity shop?

Friday 20th 

James the gardener came, and I followed him around the garden recording his comments as he named plants and pruned them.

From this....

to this

It was fascinating to watch him chopping and snipping with a pair of long-handled shears - within an hour the whole border was trimmed ready for this season. I would never have dared grab a little lavendar plant by all the loose stems and just take off all the top growth with one snip... 

Then I went back to making four dozen Zimbabwean sweet potato cookies for a coffee morning on the Saturday...

Saturday 22nd

World Day of Prayer (formerly Women's World Day of Prayer) is coming up (Friday 6th March) and we always have a coffee morning in our area to show a powerpoint presentation about the country for the year - Zimbabwe - but you've probably guessed. As usual I loaded up soundsystem, microphone, table cloths, a tray of primula plants to make table decorations (just bung each pot into a tea cup), paper napkins (leftover from Christmas as I forgot to buy any), laptop, HDMI cable, printed copy of the script, and two tins of cookies. And, most importantly, my Best Beloved who has to put up with so much. I needed his skill to set up the TV/laptop/sound system/microphone connections, and his strength to put up tables and fetch and carry chairs. The other ladies appeared in good time and somehow, together, all working but not necessarily as a well-oiled machine, the coffee morning happened.

Afterwards I planted up the primulas with the last bit of energy and then sat in a collapsed heap for the rest of the day.

In the evening, Himself went round to deal with a problem on my father's PC, and brought him back for Roast Lamb, roast potatoes, roast sweet potato, carrots and peas.

We were in bed shortly after nine, and asleep before ten.

Sunday 23rd

That's today!

I've sat about - upstairs in bed for the morning, and downstairs still in my dressing gown this evening.

Himslf has brought me breakfast in bed (actually, he has done this just about every day this week!) and lunch (he has done this just about every day this week) and supper (he has done this just about every day this week).

I've been adding squares to this blanket that I'm making using yarn that I've found in my god-mother's house. I might not be able to, or want to keep her stuff, but making this blanket is a peaceful sort of thing to be doing, and when it is finished I'll have something useful to keep or give away.

Deep breath, and back into the fray! I've an easy start though - just three pupils to teach all day.   

Friday 11th October - Flowers in the rain

Isn't there a song? 'I'm just sitting watching flowers in the rain'

Oh yes and it was the first song played on Radio 1.

And I love this Debussy Jardins sous la pluie  although I can't play it, unlike this ten-year-old

Anyway, it is raining here today. He has taken our little car to the garage as it keeps producing a warning symbol on the display, without any clue as to what is wrong. I am having a 'morning off'; it should be a whole day but the afternoon has been hi-jacked by a committee meeting - blah blah blah.

So, I have been catching up;

researching woodworm, death's watch beetle and dry rot for the book, and yes, I did ring someone up and explain that the farmhouse I am renovating is purely imaginary and how much would it cost to get the beetles and the dry rot fixed?

thinking about the next bits of writing

researching medieval men's names - d'ya'know, choosing names for people in the book is really tricky. One of the characters is turning out to be a right bstrd, and I will have to change his name as it is the same as a friend's husband. Not saying who. Don't bother to ask. He started out ok - the character, I mean. The husband, as far as I know, is a thoroughly decent chap.

making chikenduzas - a Zimbabwe candy cake. I've just taken them out of the oven - they are not going to look like the picture, not least because I have used mini loaf tins, and don't have any pink food colouring. At the moment they are solid and rubbery to touch - the proof will be in the eating once they have cooled down.

The committee meeting is the AGM of the Womens' World Day of Prayer thingy. Next year is 'Zimbabwe' , so I'm testing recipes for the coffee morning.

(Before baking)

Finally, doing some arty stuff

 Which is where the 'flowers in the rain' bit comes in... as I was out raking pictures in the rain.

Here's the photo for the picture above.

The passion flowers have been a delight - more and more and still more to come

The triffid is about to flower - I have no idea what it will look like. It will be walking round the garden catching the pigeons next. 

Sunday 4th February - Cold and Grey

It was cold and sunny this morning, but that has all changed as the afternoon has continued.

Now it is half past two, and the cats have made their feelings abundantly clear. I would have been sitting in comfort at the PC, but one cat, after prowling and meowling for ages, has decided to settle down at last on the computer chair;

somewhere in the folds of the quilt you might just make out her ear.

The other is asleep on a cushion balanced on the radiator.

enough  about cats.

I am going to have to set a limit on my book and Kindle purchases. So I have. But I'm not saying what it is in case I need to make adjustments. I suppose I could try and give up buying books for Lent? That means I would still have just over a week before Ash Wednesday on 14th February. I've got a fair few stacked up in the 'New Books to Read' pile, and it is not as though we don't have hundreds in the house and access to thousands in the library... and Easter is only a couple of months away.

Chocolate, cakes and biscuits don't usually figure in my 'Giving up for Lent' choices. I did give up biscuits once, and nearly managed it. I ate one biscuit by accident. I was chatting with a friend, and discovered the taste of biscuit in my mouth with no memory of having lifted it from the plate, conveyed it to my mouth, or crunched it up. The other I ate on purpose; 5-year-old daughter appeared with bag of biscuits she had made at school, so of course I ate one. What mother wouldn't have?

I shall be baking biscuits for the upcoming Womens' World Day of Prayer coffee morning which will happen at church on Saturday week. I say 'happen', because I am supposed to be 'organising' it, much against my will (and better judgement). One of the most unlikely things any 'spiritual' person discerned about me was that I my 'gift' was for organisation. Maybe he meant the person next to me?

We will serving traditional biscuits and cakes from Suriname; not as easy as I had hoped. The most popular cake is Bojo Cake, made with coconut and cassava. First catch your cassava - sounds like a long-legged antelope to me. So I found a recipe for...

Traditional Surinamese Custard Biscuits

heat oven to 180C, line two baking trays with baking paper

Melt 100g butter

add 120g castor sugar (I use sugar which is stored in a jar with vanilla pods for baking, so no need for

vanilla extract

add an egg, mix well,

add 200g of custard power, or half and half custard powder and cornflour

mix well, and use spoons to dollop onto the baking trays. I made 16 biscuits the first time, but will make smaller ones the second time. Leave a gap, they spread a little.

decorate with "disco sprinkles" (this recipe came from a Dutch blog, translated by google). They look like hundreds and thousands in the picture on the blog. I've bought gluten-free ones for the next time I make them.

B ake for 25 mins according to the website; I'd check after 15. They are done when they are just beginning to brown round the edges.

They are very sweet, quite moreish, with a strange texture. They taste quite custardy...

So that's my contribution sorted.

Sunday 20th March - Lack of Posts -Teeth - WWDoP

No blog posts for ages?

This blog was originally conceived as a letter from home to family (and friends), and the family has been in telephone contact, or even here, quite a bit over the past few weeks - Mothering Sunday, a birthday...

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

which means that I haven't "written" to them for a while.

However, I enjoy reading posts on other blogs I follow, so it is only fair to reciprocate! But what to write?

The last three weeks have had the added excitement of three visits to the dentist for the repair of an old root canal filling and replacement crown. That didn't hurt too much, surprisingly, but when it came to the descale and clean... I'm hoping I didn't actually speak out loud when my mind was shouting "You can stop doing that anytime NOW". Judging by the way the dentists determinedly carried on, I think I kept silence.

It was also the month for the annual "Womens' World Day of Prayer" service, this year held at my home church (I'm never sure where to put the apostrophe - but luckily I won't be expected to pass year 6 SATS tests in English next term).

I was in charge of organizing it, which entailed gathering together

all my Indonesian sarongs (to act as tablecloths for "please stay for refreshments which will be served in the hall afterwards")

A load of "props" for the service:

a piece of sugar cane (I substituted a bag of Free Trade sugar)
maraccas
a white jasmine pot plant
a candle and candle holder and box of matches
supply of brightly coloured scarves in case anyone forgot the dress code (we went for bright clothes, rather than trying to assemble Spanish-style ruffled dresses for everyone. Plus it is jolly cod in England at this time of year. I wore a thermal vest. I'm still wearing thermal vests.)
a large kitchen bowl of "provisions" (I hoped that a melon, some sweet potatoes, some bananas and a couple of leeks would fit the bill)


It looks like a list of disparate items from a mystery story.

Also required for the service
spare copies of the music
booklets for the service
spare copies of the script for the meditation
a USB memory stick with the powerpoint slides
Baskets for the collection

and probably another dozen bits and pieces - it was two weeks ago which seems like twenty years.

Oh, and round up "the cast"; Reader 1, Reader 2, four Cuban ladies, three young Cuban girls, musicians, someone to make the refreshments, someone to sort out microphones, someone to set up and operate the powerpoint presentation. We nearly drew a blank on the young girls, but one came, and we got her to do all three parts.

CUBA?! Every year, the service is created by the women of a different country, and much to our amazement, this year was Cuba's turn. That wold also explain the sugar cane.

Aha! The apostrophe comes between "n" and "s".

Anyway, that took up two mornings and one evening, and was well worth the effort.

And also reminded me I feel that the time has come for me to hand over my position on the local WWDoP committee to someone else. It will be years before it is our church's turn again, which might be a persuader for my successor.

Well, buenos noches, as we all said in the service.

  
 

Saturday 2nd February - Warning! warning! Overload alert...

I've had a really fun day today. Madness, utter madness, to take on an extra day's work with everything else going on, but when a colleague asked me, I couldn't resist. She's great to work with, and I knew she'd do all the serious planning, and do it really, really well, so I said "yes" to helping to run a Percussion Workshop for nearly thirty young children, aged seven, give or take a year.

Whoah! On Thursday I checked my diary, and discovered that the Workshop, so far in the future when I agreed to help, was the day after tomorrow! But she'd done the hard graft, and I just turned up (with my amplifier, boomwhackers, resources, mp3 player, spare percussion instruments, packed lunch, extra drink, box of tissues for snotty children and packet of kitchen paper in case of spills at lunch time - Baa Baa Black Sheep FOUR bags full of gear).

So I collected her, and her four bags full, waited while she had a precautionary painkiller ("waking up on the morning of a percussion workshop with a headache doesn't seem fair") and that was the last moment of peace and quiet until 3 pm.

It was a fun, fun, fun day (as far as I am concerned). I can quite see that very few grown adults would regard sitting on the floor playing "the cup game", flapping their arms around singing "The Penguin Song", moving around to music like an elephant or a can-can-dancing tortoise (Carnival of the Animals), directing thirty children armed with loaded boomwhackers ("NO whacking ANYONE ELSE, do you hear?")

(random picture from the internet to show what boomwhackers are - this isn't the class I was teaching)
http://www.musick8.com/boomwhackers/bwphotodisplay.php?num=1&photo=goss.jpg

Yeah - fun fun fun and I really did enjoy myself. The course ended at 3pm after a show to parents, and I then had half an hour to pack up, load the car, and zoom round to a nearby church hall for a tea and coffee and biscuits and powerpoint presentation on France, for the forthcoming Womens' World Day of Prayer event. That went OK too; my laptop behaved and connected sweetly to their projection system, there weren't too many unpronounceable words in the script that comes with the presentation, and someone was able to take over when I succumbed to a fit of coughing two-thirds of the way through.

          

Home then, after dropping a friend off in the next village, and rattle in the latest weekly issue of www.themusicjungle.co.uk - my weekly music magazine (oh alright, blog), and bung some salmon into the oven (line roasting dish with large piece of foil, glug in a little olive oil, dump in the salmoin fillets, salt, pepper, lemon except mine was a solid as a stone so I didn't bother, seal foil to enclose salmon in a parcel, roast at 170 for 30 mins, serve with curly kale and new potatoes) and relax in front of the telly.

Oh, did I miss out the bit where I backed into someone else's car in the car park after the music workshop, and remodelled - slightly but significantly altered - the shape of their driver and passenger door? I know I LOOKED through the mirror as a backed out, but I clearly didn't SEE properly. I was properly upset - no, I didn't cry, not that kind of upset. But it was a stupid thing to do, and made me late for the French thingy, and will have caused no end of nuisance and botheration for the other car owner. I left a note, and we've been in contact, and, all things considered, they were very reasonable. But they really didn't need the hassle. Tomorrow, in daylight, I'll check out the damage to my car. I think it's just a but scuffed on the corner of the bumper.
OVERLOAD ALERT - MESSAGE RECEIVED AND UNDERSTOOD. Sort of. After all, I have said "Yes" to another workshop at the end of March - they are such fun, fun, fun....