Sunday 15th July - The Week Ends

It was too hot to do anything energetic today.

But painting (watercolours, not walls) is a gentle activity.

Today I learned to do skies and clouds

I'm still doing my practising in a journal that the daughter gave me a couple of Christmases ago; the paper is definitely NOT designed for watercolour, which is why I've had to hold the page down with the china palette. 

and added a sort of Norfolk marshes scene copied from my current "how to paint water colours"

The clouds have a slight look of distant mountains, or even steam trains. There are no mountains in Norfolk, but I suppose they could have been steam trains....?

Sunday 15th July - Wimbledon Final - Books - etc

There's a steady thunk of tennis balls, interspersed with unintelligible shouts from the line judges going on behind me, as two tennis giants battle out the final.

It's going to be a long match, and I don't have enough tennis mania to watch all of it...

I have updated my "books read to date" page; a mixed bag of reviews this time. And I've just finished "The Bookshop" by Penelope Fitzgerald, the first I have read by her. My word, Mrs Gamart has made me cross. I want to go to Norfolk and speak my mind, and absolutely refuse, noisily, to visit her Arts Centre... oh, but hang on. It is fiction, and set in the fifties... I found the book a slow read until the final few chapters when it changed in pace and the inevitable became apparent. The cover is all dull orangey greys, which is roughly the colour of the story inside.

I see, from looking at one of the other versions of the book, that it has become "A major motion picture"

and now I have just discovered that it is on in our local cinema at the moment! But only until Thursday. Well, what a surprise. The only day I could go would be Tuesday... I think I will wait until it appears on netflix or TV. There's just too much on at the moment. Besides which, the way I feel about Mrs Gamart I would probably start shouting at her.


I have ordered a number of copies of this book;

to give to each class in the two small primary schools I am leaving at the end of the term. It is a particularly colourful book of "Life Wisdom" suitable for all ages in my opinion, and for once doesn't have too many of the "you can do anything you want if you believe/dream/wish it" type comments.

This was the double spread that sold it to me;

Excellent advice...

Probably one of the ways I know that I'm ready to cut down on class teaching is that there's too
much individuality happening at moments when
"everyone doing the same thing at the same time" would be more beneficial. Like lining quietly. Or waiting to be told what to do. And so on... (yeah, I know I'm beginning to sound like a Grumpy Old Teacher!)

Just one full week left of school. It will be pretty packed with school plays and rehearsals, and the last of the music lessons, and a couple of works socials. It's been a while since I've been so glad to see the Summer holidays arrive.

Meanwhile - it is still hot - not a breath of wind. He came back from delivering milk to The Grand Old Man's refrigerator (he's been on holiday and arrives back late tonight) and checking out his computer with - joy of joys - ice cream. We just managed to eat them before they melted.

The cats blame us  - there's nothing we can do for them except groom them to remove all unnecessary fur. 

Sunday 8th July - Random Notes

It is still very hot.

The young lettuce plants (on the right, the mauve flowers are self-seeded nemesia) are not going to make it;

But I have been able to pick some peas, enough beans for a meal, and one pod of broad beans.

The cats flop about, going from one shaded spot to another, moving on when they have warmed that patch of floor or patio or carpet or cushion to find another cooler place. We have to groom them every day; the best brush for Leo is a very expensive Mason Pearson hair brush that the daughter left behind when she moved out. I don't think she will be wanting it back.

To make refreshing cold tea, put a couple of pinches of china tea into a bottle or jug with water and leave overnight in the fridge.

We are able to sit under the apple tree again. Phew - it is the coolest place in the the house or garden. There was a strange and unpleasant smell in that area of the garden last week, but all is well at the moment - I guess desiccated poo has no smell.

Outside is a good place to be dabbling with watercolour, as the washes dry out nice and quickly. Except when the washes dry out too quickly. Also the paper I am using is too chalky and thirsty - altogether a bit of a challenge. However, I'm pleased with this;

The left hand page was already printed in the book, the right hand page is my effort. And I'm very pleased with this;

The cottage needs a bit more work (too late, everything is dry, but maybe I'll go over it with pencils or something - it doesn't matter) You get that effect of the stone wall by poking at the wet paint with the edge of an old credit card (I didn't have one) or the pointy other end of your brush (mine are all rounded) or - traditionally, - your fingernail - I have ten of those all to hand!

A new character invaded my novel without asking yesterday - he is called Ruthless Rupert because he is incredibly selfish - that's why his wife, Ruth, left him. He has arrived mid-scene, so now I need to know if he is going to stay, how he managed to inveigle his way into the story, and what his purpose is. My word, but he is a bit of a callous b*st*rd so-and-so. I may have to dispose of him somehow, but there again, he appears to have two young sons, so that does seem a bit drastic. But he is an appalling role model for the boys, so maybe that would be for the best? Perhaps he will just melt away in the heat.

The agapanthuseses are unwrapping themselves from their paper envelopes; that brownish creamish bit pointing left is the bud covering (I expect is has some botanical name) just about to fall to the ground as the flowers expand.

The white ones all come from some pots that I bought in Horsham market for Mummy's birthday someyears back - may even have been in 2003 - I remember having them all crammed into the car, in the footwell behind my seat and poking their long leaves and flowers through the gap between the front seats. I've potted them up once or twice, and will have to do the same again soon; last time there was almost no soil left in the pot, just a tight-packed mass of roots. 

 I've got some blue ones as well now, all from the parent's garden. These will flower next week; their buds are all still tightly wrapped up.

Here is another photograph from the series that BB took at Wakehurst Place the other day;

The object of the photograph can just be made out if you look at a point about three-quarters over to the right and one third up from the bottom. Here it is zoomed in;

Impressive!

I'm doing a free on-line jazz piano course from www.futurelearn.com All was going swimmingly-ish, until the tutor set us the exercise of playing "Things ain't what they used to be" five times, using five-tenths chords and seven-tenths chords and improvising on the C- F- G- and American- Blues scales. I know what all these things mean, but my hands are too small to play tenth-chords. I shall find a way of fudging it. Some people on the course have recorded the left hand, using two hands to play the chords, and then recorded the tune and improvisations over the top. Is that ingenuity? or cheating? or fudging it? Who cares - it's supposed to be jazz, not Chopin.

I'm slowly, infinitely slowly, having a go at Chopin's Nocturne no 1. I heard it being played on Classic FM and thought "I should be able to manage that". But never as gracefully as Ashkenazy who was playing it on the radio.

The problem with both piano projects, the jazz and the Chopin, is that they are much easier if you have man-size paws, and they also need to be memorised to any hope of playing them with a sense of flow.

It's already very hot, even though it's only 9:45 am but I'm going to set to work before the sun gets round to shining into the piano end of the room and making everything even hotter. 

Thursday 5th July - Sunny Days

Yup - the sunny spell continues. The grass verges along our road are bleached yellow, we are carting buckets and watering cans of water up and down the garden - but I'm not complaining. Especially now that he has sorted out the air conditioning in my car ("if you just open these vents here....")


Yesterday, no, the day before, I followed a laden skip lorry up the bypass - at a very discrete distance. Some evil gremlin hiding under the tarpaulin was chucking out four-foot lengths of aluminium guttering at random intervals. I was extremely grateful when I could turn left and he carried straight on.

The children are coping well with the sticky heat most of the time - the secret is to take everything slowly and not expect any quick intelligence - any intelligence, come to think of it - from them. It's like Indonesia, when you walk around, slopping the soles of your feet and fanning yourself sighing "Ah-doo-lah, pannas"...

I'm on a watercolour-dabbling kick at the moment, in a very small way, because I can only find my very small sketch book. Somewhere there is a larger one, but it is hiding from me. I'd like this picture better if it didn't look so much like a face.

These are meant to be honeysuckle flowers - and so they are, if I label them "Honeysuckle". Otherwise they can be whatever you like.
 

Himself is photographing again; here's Wakehurst Place looking quintessentially English

Sunday 1st July - A busy lazy Sunday

Starting from last night, indeed; to Ightam Mote for "A Theatrical Event, talked, and themed meal" on the subject of John Singer's Sargent's "Girl in a white dress". Follow the link for all the blurb. The Grand Man (shall we leave out "old"? I think we should) arranged for us two, and himself, and a freiend to go, the caveat being that we provided the transport. All our fears of a beastly M25 journey were null and void - I think we had the smoothest, fastest, easiest trip there and back ever, (Oh the power of prayer, or was it crossed fingers that did the trick?)

The whole setting and story put me strongly in mind of "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith, and I shall have to listen to it on CD again, (or even read the book).

The setting is just delightful, beautiful, magical, timeless - you choose. We will be going back.

Today I have be conscious of the double meaning of the word "render" while attempting to navigate through "Dear Lord and Father  of Mankind" at church - six verses are too many as one looses concentration halfway through. I reckon I did a decent job of getting round most of the notes for the first couple of verses, and managed to pull my self back together in time for the last. But no brainspace left for "Oh still small voice of calm" at the end.

I have made another sour-dough loaf; it's a lengthy process that I started yesterday evening, resulting in a little loaf this afternoon.

I have taken "an interesting photograph" (challenge for July - take an interesting photo every day, draw something every day, sit out in a green space for ten minutes (or was it 20 minutes? weather dependant, I rather think) every day.

This is the photograph;

   
I sense your puzzlement. But it is interesting to me; I have often pondered how all those petals fit into the tight buds, and un ravel themselves into flower. The agapanthus are just about to flower; you can see the tight, point buds, wrapped in a sort of papery kind of cover, and inside are all the little florets, bunched tight like a tub of cotton buds, and then different stages of sorting themselves out into the beautiful flowers that are about to happen. How? (And yes, that's my thumb. Edit it out yourself if you like).

I've been dabbling with watercolours, not to any great effect. I need to work on colour mixing, as my main area of expertise seems to be mixing mud.

I've been working on a Chopin Nocturne, no 1, off and on for a week or so. I put in some proper time and now first page is beginning to come together, sometimes. Hoping to have got it working more reliably in another couple of days

I've completed week one of my www.futurelearn jazz piano level 1 course. All going swimmingly until I tried recording it - the extra pressure sends all my improvisations in unexpected directions, and then I forget the main tune and end up improvising that as well. We're working on "Things aint what they used to be", and I'm a leetle tired of that now (so is anyone else sharing the house, I suspect).

Only three weeks of term left... survival becomes a possibility.

 

Saturday 30th June - 2018

Pinch, punch, end of the month...

no, I am a day early for that rhyme...

It is Saturday afternoon, I have taught piano lessons to seven bleary-eyed children this morning; bleary from the heat and not enough sleep...

and there are still three weeks of term left to go!

I'm already planning my schedule for next year and hoping to create one teach-free day per week, refusing all blandishments to take on a lunch-time recorder club ("only an hour and a half and it's on your doorstep") or any other "treats" on offer.

There's things I want to do, places I want to visit, now that I am of what used to be considered retirement age!

I think I have about three days of my daily journal to write up and I'm trying to think what (apart from teaching!) I have been doing. Like having lunch in Nyman's Gardens last Tuesday; a brief interlude between schools when I could sit and listen to the birds and contemplate the flowers;

and an alarming incident on Wednesday morning when Leo (the cat) discovered that both the main windows in our bedroom were open... 

There was a time when both cats used to enjoy going through one open window, walking along the outside windowsill and back in through the other open window. That was downstairs, the sitting room woindow, and the old, very rough wooden windowsill.  I had a very real fear that Leo would discover, too late, that the new, smooth plastic windowsill was a very different thing, and that a fall from the first floor bedroom window was a completely different experience...  She was more than halfway out of the window when I realised what she was doing, and I was pretty certain that if I made a grab for her back end the result would not be good.

"Leo, Leo," I called, in my most winning tones, and fortunately she changed her mind and came back inside. Thunk thunk as I hastily closed both windows. Some cats haven't realised when they are too old for acrobatics...

It's too hot to sit outside, and to warm to sit inside, and too sweaty to type.

Roll on the arrival of the real English summer...