Sitting under a magnolia tree

This weekend

 I sat under a magnolia tree.

I must have sat there for at least two minutes

Then I thought, I really must get a picture of this

beautiful tree and I got up to fetch my camera.

I sat down again under the magnolia tree.

Then I saw another sycamore seedling

(not pictured)

and I got up to pull it out.

I didn't sit down again.

It's a character

flaw.

The scarves are on the line

Once I'd unhooked the clematis and given the line a wipe

I was able to hang out the first washing of the year

and because I have been well-schooled by magazines, blogs

and even cookery books (I'm looking at you Ms Raven)

I knew better than to put out any old uncoordinated laundry.

I washed my scarves and lamented just a little bit
the lack of a shepherd's hut behind the washing line.

and indeed, the lack of a meadow

 and the beautiful Sussex High Weald
behind the shepherd's hut.

Mr Raven, otherwise known as Adam Nicholson
came to give a talk about the Shiant Isles 
(bequeathed to him by his father Nigel Nicholson)
in the Primary school recently.
I met him another time at an Open Day for Perch Hill.
He was taking the money at the gate. 
They work hard.

I really can't begrudge them.

The weekend

The air was of no temperature at all. 

Skylarks upscaled at our approach.

There was no wind.

Motionless ewes stood distant, expectant, unruffled.

The sea flowed innocently over the sand.

Two swans beat and beat their wings triumphant,

the bother of becoming airborne nearly forgotten.

A castle stood untroubled by its past.

The niche needed no embellishment.

Four daffodils could be spared

for the table.

What ho!

Bertie Wooster: Ha! Do you ever feel like opening the window and shouting

that the world is a wonderful place Jeeves?

Jeeves: Erm. . .no, sir.

Bertie Wooster: Or dancing in the street, scattering rose petals on the passers-by?

Jeeves: Only infrequently, sir.

'There is only one cure for grey hair.

It was invented by a Frenchman.

It is called the guillotine.'

I am going to see this.

Hoping to disprove another of Plum's utterances that 

everything in life that's any fun is either immoral, illegal or fattening.

Toodle-pip!

Shibui

A rainbow mixture of tulips from the supermarket

in my Susie Cooper Eyelash jug with a tiny chip in the rim.

Rainbows from the prisms on the window sill.

SHIBUI.

Simplicity,

implicitness,

modesty,

silence,

naturalness,

everydayness,

and

imperfection.

Shadow play

Brought out of hiding

Picked hastily between sharp showers because

they are hiding too far down the swampy garden to be appreciated

unless I'm very kindly replenishing the bird feeders.

I think I am somewhat in need of plenishing too.
This might do the trick but I'd be
deplenishing my wallet at the same time.
Time to bring the juicer out of hiding.

Abalone and lustreware bowl

If I'd known how tricky this was going to be
I'd have started with something flat.

Blue and gold

We've had some beautiful blue sky and gold sun at last.

So I'm making a blue and gold bowl.

This is work in progress.

Like Sarah I thought it was time to liberate my art materials.

I might not make something perfect

but I'll make nothing at all

if I leave them in the plan chest.

I might finally permit myself to use some precious leaf metal to line the bowl.

It has waited twenty years for its moment in the sun.

Ripping the lid off it

Why walk downstairs when you can go slopestyle?

This morning I nailed it with a personal best,

450 out of the rails, 540 off the box,

a switch 1260, 2 spins hitting the sweet spot

half way down the stairs slope

with a Japan grab and a bow and arrow,

landing in the back seat at the bottom.

I'm going back up with the laundry in a minute.

Expect some crowd pleasing flips on the way back down.

Tomorrow: kitchen curling.

Dripping

A very brief foray out of doors between deluges,

revealed the vigorous and wholly unexpected growth

of this clematis Armandii.

The clothes line is entirely redundant.

This land drain however, is not

and I am eternally grateful to the 19th century builder

who placed it at the bottom of the sloping garden near our house.

Matt

Sweet

Sweet rationing ended shortly before I was born.

And after that, we couldn't get enough of the stuff.

Two sugars in tea, sugar on already sweetened cereal,

sugar cubes pushed into blood oranges to suck,

a little paper twist of sweets each morning for a snack,

sixpence to spend on sweets every Sunday,

pineapple chunks, Smarties, Jelly Babies, chocolate éclairs,

Spangles, Refreshers, Fruit Gums, 

Cadbury's chocolate, two lumps for break at school,

Turkish Delight, Maltesers, Rolos, sherbert lemons,
Lucozade to pep you up after an illness,
(doctors and nurses recommend it)

a Golden Delicious apple every night in bed

after I had brushed my teeth,
Mint Polos,
(the sweet with the hole/s)

and a mouthful of mercury fillings.

I have endured many hours in so many dentist's chairs,
often at the hands of a dentist called I.Screech,
sometimes without anaesthetic.

I am not convinced that all of those fillings were even necessary

despite the sugar onslaught, 

because dentists were paid per filling and would even fill milk teeth.

The latest programme of repairs to old fillings

has just finished and I am nursing an empty wallet and a sore jaw.

But now, I am going to watch this

to see if I should wean myself off sucrose and glucose, 
which still lurk, in admittedly more respectably disguised forms, 
in my diet, even if it is too late for my teeth.

Well I've watched the programme and, how interesting,
it's not just fat, and it's not just sugar,
it's the fatal combination of the two that lies at the root of the problem.
Luckily, I don't much like doughnuts,
but it looks as though meringues and cream
are off the menu and I'd better prise myself out of this chair
and build some muscle.

Teetering

The highest tide we have ever seen here

and it was still coming in.

This pine tree is digging its heels in

on the softly crumbling cliff edge.

There is a garden pavilion not far behind.