Friday 2nd June - unwelcome telephone call

I'm typing this on my tablet, a slow process compared to rattling away on the computer keyboard. That's because I am a little reluctant to switch on the computer until I get the all-clear from the IT guru (currently rescuing daughter from the snarls of Southern Rail).

We had one of the usual scam phone calls; "this is *insert name of famous computer software company* and you have a problem with your security blah blah"

The IT guru responded robustly, but not rudely, and put the phone down. The scammer called back, and again, and again... with increasing urgency about the imminent security disaster that would ensue if we didn't switch on the computer and let him on straight away.

We resorted to the samba whistle...

Is he still out there, lurking somewhere in the wires, ready to pounce?

I think I'll wait for a while before I use it again.

Hang on. Visiting IT guru has just appeared and said we are safe; said scammer cannot actually fit through the cables. Phew.

Thursday 1st June - Saturday in Kircudbright

I've just come back - on Tuesday evening - from a long weekend reunion with some friends. We used to live within an hour or so of each other, but then one moved to Cornwall, one to Suffolk, and one to Scotland. Get-togethers where we ALL came together in one place became harder to manage, as you can imagine.

Sadly, one of the group died almost exactly a year ago, and our reunion was partly to share memories, as well as catch up on what we had been doing.

We have had a GREAT time - at least I hope I can say that for all of us! I had been watching the weather forecast - blistering hot on the Friday that we were travelling up, and then cold, wet and rainy for the next few days until the Tuesday of our return journey. The reality was not a bit like that...

Saturday started with a walk along the shore of the River Dee, in warm balmy sunshine. A stop for sandwiches part way round was interrupted by the incoming tide which threatened to surround the rocks we were sitting on, and cut off our retreat to the slipway we came down. No matter, we relocated in good time, and the only one who got wet was the dog.

 
  We carried on munching as the sun shone on the fields across the water. It was a most perfect place.

Kircudbright is an artist's town, rather like Newlyn in Cornwall. This weekend past was their "Spring Fling", so we spent the rest of the day dodging hot sweaty marathon runners and prowling round the artist's studios.

This is probably my most favourite image, by Claire Cameron-Smith, from my most favourite studio of the day:

http://www.cameronsmithdesigns.co.uk/home

I hope they don't mind me copying it from their website. I would have bought the print, but made do with buying a card, which I shall be using for a "bread-and-butter" letter - "thank you" letter to our host. These are the traditional "Belties"; Belted Galloway Cattle found in the area. A piece of furniture made by Ian Cameron-Smith would have been a lovely souvenir too; have a look at their website; but too expensive, (and too impractical to bring home on the train).

So, that, apart from food and wine in the evening, was Saturday. I recommend the Fechan Red, well chilled.

Wednesday 31st May 2017 - A Useful Find

This website - I'm blogging it, so that I don't lose it.

www.britainexpress.com


full of information about various places one might like to visit - I mean places I might like to visit - and somehow slightly quirky, not the usual ones.

I've just printed off a list of historic churches and we're off to go and have a look-see.

Last week's surprise

was spotting an over-size, brightly-chequered football rolling and bouncing in a foolish fashion along the gutter of the left-hand lane dual carriageway. "Free at last", it seemed to be saying to itself. Or maybe "Help, help, I've fallen off my car and can't catch it!" Whatever.

It's a fast and furious piece of road and the mid-morning traffic was brisk; I was extremely glad to be in the right-hand lane away from any encounter with it.

I wonder what I would have done if the football had suddenly swerved in front of my car. Would I have driven right at it? I reckon it could have been about 2' 6" in diameter - too big to drive over. Would it have bounced right over my car and then caused conniptions behind me?

Should I have bothered to phone it in to the police? I did anyway - it took ages to get through the various switchboards and "press 1 for emergency..." loops.

I said it was a very large, over-sized football, but the bored voice at the other end probably only heard the word "football" and kindly informed me that they wouldn't really respond to an incident like that.

So I carried on to work and hoped for the best.

Sunday 21st May - Half-term ahoy

This coming week is the run-up to half term...

Last week was the last (just about) of the shuffled rescheduled weeks. It took a fair bit of concentration to make sure I was in the right place - and during the week I managed to find

the missing pencil-sharpener/rubber (inside the lid of the piano where I had been teaching the previous Friday)

my mp3 player (in the bag I take to drumming on Friday evenings)

my "piano-teaching" pencil case, packed with all sorts of necessities such as reward stars, post-it notes, mini folding scissors, pic-n-mix activity cards, dice for use with the cards, coloured pencils, pencil, but no pencil-sharpener/rubber as I had already lost that (left behind in a school where I don't teach piano - how did that happen?)

I know that things have drifted too far from routine when I start losing things all over the county.

"Unusual events" this week were a school music festival, which meant moving one school to another day, and a day up in London for routine clinic appointments which meant rescheduling four piano lessons, to earlier in that week, or into the coming week. It all makes for a lively time!

The clinic appointments were all very reassuring - routine check-ups along the lines of "no change, carry on as you are". I had been a bit apprehensive (to be honest, each time I usually am) in case things have altered, so I left the clinic happier than when I had arrived. When we had arrived. Of course he came too!

Afterwards, after lunch, we caught the bus back into the centre of London, stopping off at the National Gallery. We have a celebration coming up later this year, and we're working on various scenarios. One is that we just announce a date and location for afternoon tea somewhere, and the gallery was a thought. I don't know, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for art. We had a look round the Chris Ofili exhibition  because it was free

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/chris-ofili-weaving-magic-national-gallery-irresistible-pagan/

but all the Titians and Rubens and Grand Masters were too colourful and too intense and too Greek Legends and Too Much. The only things that caught my attention were Frank Auerbach drawings and sketches in the Espresso Bar. I've tried to find the ones he made of Turner's painting of Calais Pier

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-calais-pier

but I can't. You'll just have to google around until you trip across one. Then we had a nearly-good cake and drink in the cafe. Through the window we could see an old friend.

Wherever we pick for the celebration it probably won't be the National Gallery!

Saturday 13th May - Two weeks pass in a flash

Hi everyone,

Where have I been? Well, here actually, but it's been a pretty harum-scarum couple of weeks.

Monday 1st May was a Bank Holiday - we didn't do anything much, as far as I can remember, (but I could be wrong...). It was very pleasant to be "unscheduled",

no, hang about, I remember, my father walked up on the previous Saturday afternoon when it was bright and sunny - why? was it just for a walk and say hello? Anyway, it came to supper time, and he took us to a local pub for steaks (I had sea bass), and a pleasant afternoon turned into a convivial evening. All the better for being unexpected and what's that word for "as a surprise" or "Off the cuff". I'm losing my vocabulary....

The following week my work was spent playing "catch-up" because all the Monday schools now had to be moved to Friday, and "could I go on another day because the school photographer was coming in" and so forth. My paper diary looks like a trendy modern scribble picture.

Last weekend - what happened then? We went round to a friend's, with our lawnmower, as their was out of action and the new one wouldn't be arriving for a while. In return for cake and tea and strawberry tartlets (oh yes indeedy, strawberry tartlets) we, or rather BB mowed the grass, while friend and I set the world to rights.

The week that has just gone past, was spent playing "catch-up", no, wait, didn't i say that about last week? It was the week of school SATS weeks, so, once again, morning schools got rescheduled or cancelled. That turned out to be a lucky thing; I was feeling a bit trepidatiorous about my car's handbrake. I have had the handbrake fail completely, when I was waiting halfway up a ramp to exit a car-park, and some impatient old buffer was tailgating me up the ramp. I had to sit and Think Very Carefully about how I was going to persuade my car to zoom up the ramp without rolling back onto the buffer's bumpers or rocketing out into the traffic at the top of the ramp. I did manage it, leaving a cloud of black smoke behind to blind the buffer, but it was a torrid experience. So, wondering if I was being a bit over-sensitive, I drove to the garage. It was quite pleasing to be told that yes, a new caliper was required. That feeling of satisfaction of being right was almost (but not quite) worth the cost of the repair.

I've planted out my sunflower seedlings, and so far the slugs haven't eaten them.

I've harvested a handful of spinach leaves, and one pak choi, and sown some carrot seeds, surrounded by tiny basil seedlings which I hope will keep the carrot fly away. This vegetable gardening thing is very exciting! This is what it looks like now;

And here is how the bag nearest the camera (spinach and spring onions) looked at the end of April - what a difference. Totally amazing. The pellets are made of stinky wool - the smell goes after a few days - and do a brilliant job of keeping the slugs off.

And here's the pak choi back in April - it is in the bag behind the spinach and spring onions.

I've reached the weekend now, with all deadlines met, had tricky discussion with my boss about some of my work (that went ok), careful emails to parents who might, or might not have paid me for lessons (they had) and another potentially sticky situation also avoided. Apart from blog posts, and a couple of lesson write-ups, and a phone call to a parent to arrange the next lesson date, and some lesson plans to email in, and a couple of appointment times at my next hospital check-up to clarify, and a bit of re-organising in order to fit a zimmer frame in my car (I'm giving someone a lift to church, and she has recently acquired a zimmer frame) I think I may well be pretty much in the clear now - or is that a really, really foolish thing to say????

Roll on next week - it will be almost normal, apart from a music festival and a hospital check-up day causing the rescheduling of two schools and extra lessons to compensate for the day out of school.

This term is not going to run to a "normal" timetable until after the Halfterm break. So, harum-scarum is how it is going to stay for now!