Saturday 15th March - Hayling Island

I've been wanting to visit Hayling Island since about 1975.

It's a long story, so old, that I've forgotten why I ever wanted to go. We ended up there on Saturday.

Lunch at a pub (very good whitebait and chips) and then down to the Ferry end of the Island. It was sunny and breezy - I was 90% sure I wouldn't need my coat. But I put it on anyway, and I was glad of it.

We walked along the top of a shingle ridge. Actually, we walked along a carpet of seashells, which were thickly layered in a clearly defined band across the brow;

Plenty of other people were making the most of the day; horseriders,

land-yachters,

and wanna-be Andy Goldsworthys.

We walked out to the southern edge, where the great sand bank called Winner Sanders was exposed by the low tide. This was where all the land yachters were making for, to race up and down the hard wet sand, pulled by the same kind of kites that the surfers were using.

It was a great afternoon. We walked, and took pictures,

and took pictures, and walked, until our faces were red and my hair was tangled and it was time to go home. 

Saturday 15th March - Music

I'm rather pleased with this

which I arranged for a choir of unknown numbers of unknown voices and unknown ability and experience. In the end fourteen people came, four men and ten ladies, and after about ten minutes were able to sing this through unaccompanied. Result!

It's for their Maundy Thursday church service next month.

If you want a copy, leave a comment and I'll send you the file.

Thursday 5th March - The Happiness

 

On Thursday afternoon, driving back home along a dull stretch of dual carriageway, I suddenly realised that I was completely happy.

This is not an unusual state for me - I am used to having these moments of feeling totally, entirely, for-no-particular-reason, happy. Warmer than contentment, calmer than joy. A a deep, deep feeling, like a well, like a pool, or a lake, of clear strong, refreshing water.

Maybe it was just because of the weather - sunshine and cherry blossom and daffodils and blue skies. But I have felt The Happiness in bad weather, on cold days, in crowded streets, at all sorts of seasons, in all kinds of places  in times gone by.

What is blog-worthy is that this feeling had been absent for so long that I had forgotten about it. I probably haven't felt The Happiness all year, so it is nice to get it back again.

Cherry tree © Glysiak, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/british-natural-history/urban-tree-survey/identify-trees/tree-factsheets/c-to-e/cherries/cherries-factsheet/index.html

Saturday 1st March - Avoir du Pois and Lent

Ohhhh Yes! All that sitting around for three weeks has made a difference to my weight.

Not much, but those pounds can't stay there - if every chest infection results in a weight gain of 2 pounds, and then there's Easter on the horizon, and Summer and ice cream, and then, later on, Christmas

Those pounds have to go.

I've been reading an article in my mother's Good Housekeeping magazine about how someone lost 42 pounds in 42 weeks. Without dieting. Without doing anything more spectacular than being sensible and patient and determined. In other words, common sense. No tricks, no magic methods, no obsessing with food.

After all, we all know what makes us fat. We all know what we shouldn't eat.

So far, this week, I have walked away from one toasted teacake opportunity, two biscuit moments and a toast temptation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spiced_teacakes_29429

Unfortunately I have given in to two hot chocolates and two (but not three) glasses of sherry. I suspect flat white coffees should be rationed too.

I could give up chocolate for Lent, but that would be breaking my New Year's Resolution. And I'm not going to give up biscuits and cake. In my line of work I need occasional chocolate and biscuits and cake to keep me sweet! So, I shall take up MODERATION for Lent.

My other Lent challenges are to OBEY THE RULES, and to DO IT NOW (instead of procrastinating).

I'm also planning to replace hours frittered away on Free Cell with getting a couple of my on-going half-finished craft projects completed.

Not very spiritual, you might say. Well, I've been reading quite a lot of "spiritual" and "religious" stuff, one way and another, and I think that these challenges are right on target.

Saturday 1st March - First Day of Spring

And also St David's Day.

We have daffodils outside the front door now

and some of the very elderly (and confused?) cherry trees in our road have been in blossom for several weeks.

I hadn't realised that the anenomes in the pot by the front door

close up at night

 

rather like I do. I've been alert and ready and energetic first thing all this week, but feeling bug-eyed with tiredness by the time I've taught the last pupil and finished the evening meal.

 

I'm glad to be back at work, though, after the past few weeks. Not working is really nice, provided that I can fill my time with MY choice of activities - my choice of chilling out, or being busy. Enforced idleness has been a bit of a challenge!

 



Friday 21st February - Foraging

I have been told that it is not the steroids that make you gain weight, it's the way that they act on your appetite that creates the problem.

Friday was what I call an "eating day". Every so often I have one of those days when I graze and nibble and finish off and tidy up and clear away everything - the biscuits in the tin, the last piece of cake, a couple of cherry tomatoes, something left in my weekly "graze box", a couple of handful's of breakfast cereal, another helping of cereal because that last bowlful tasted so good, ah, who left that chocolate sitting there?

It won't do.

Those crusts of bread look so untidy cluttering up the breadboard. Now, with a little bit of butter and honey...

Oddly enough, I was feeling a bit peculiar by the time I went to bed. A bit rumbly-in-the-tummy.

Tomorrow's another day.