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.

Awash

I have a friend in Muchelney, the Somerset village

cut off by flood water for the last four weeks.

She was surprisingly sanguine about their plight and

talked of the community spirit and camaraderie

that had blossomed in the community.

Their only way out of the village is by a boat 

that operates an hourly service in daylight.

The rest of the time she dons chest waders from

the local fishing shop where only the larger men's sizes are stocked.

Thameside properties have also been inundated.

In a weird moment of synchronicity if not solidarity,

(my feet are quite dry after all)

I found myself reading Elizabeth Taylor's

The Thames Spread Out, last night.

Rose has been sequestered in an upstairs room

since the Thames broke its banks.

The sun was beginning to set and she knew how dark it got these winter days. 

She took her cup of tea and went out on to the balcony to watch.

Every ten years or so, the Thames in that place would rise too high, 

brim over its banks and cover the fields for miles, 

changing the landscape utterly. The course of the river itself she could trace 

here and there from the lines of the willow trees or other landmarks she knew.

Beyond, on what before had been the other bank, 

a little train was crossing the floods. 

The raised track was still a foot or two above the river level

Puffing along, reflected in the water, it curved away into the distance
 and disappeared among the poplars by the church,

There all the gravestones were submerged, 

and the inn had the river flowing in through the front door and out the back.

'Thames-side Venice,' a newspaper reporter had called it.

The children loved it, and now Rose saw two young boys rowing by on the pink water.

The sun had slipped down through the mist, was very low,

behind some grey trees blobbed with mistletoe;

but the light on the water was very beautiful.

The white seabirds scarcely moved 

and a row of swans went in single file down a footpath 

whose high railing-tops on either side broke the surface of the water.

Rose sipped her tea and watched, intent on having the most of every second 

of the fading loveliness - the silence and the reflections and the light, 

and then the silence broken by a cat crying far away 

or a shout coming thinly across the cold air.

Would anyone like these?

I am still up to my pearls in decluttering.

Yesterday, film negatives,

today, very old newspapers.

Would you like to help me?

What do you find hardest to let go of?

Clop along*

Given the way the day ended

with more vicious rain and a computer seriously on the blink

(neither sending nor receiving email 

and imperiously demanding login keychain passwords

if I so much as look at it)

it is hard to believe that this

is how it started.

Fortunate then that I had the foresight

to purchase these

so that I can go to my happy place.

*It's definitely 'clop along' not a typo.

Spitting blood*

I have been dealing with an iniquitous

mail order company,

(the sort that sends out shoddy little catalogues

aimed at the over 60s),

on behalf of a 90 year old friend

who unfortunately relies on these companies 

for the sort of shopping she can no longer do in person.

I had processed the order online but they had invoiced her 

in the parcel with completely different prices.

They have numerous special offers

which fluctuate and expire daily.

Some of these appear in the catalogue,

but not online, and vice versa.

Catalogues hoarded by the elderly

quickly become out of date.

All of this is designed to befuddle even if you are

reasonably compos mentis.

They had caused great anxiety by telling my friend

 that an amount was still outstanding.

I knew this was impossible.

Emails were ignored so I had to ring them.

Their 'customer service' line

with its premium rate phone number

would have cost me over a £1 just to listen to the message

that they were busy helping other customers,

had I not known I could find an alternative number on the

Say No to 0870 website.

Even once connected, the girl kept disappearing

supposedly to check things, and the line would go dead.
Eventually she conceded that there had been 'a mistake'.

A mistake that had to be rectified at my expense.

Of course I soon found pages of complaints against

these people online, but my friend does not want

to believe that she has been duped.

She values her autonomy so I have to be careful

not to be seeming to undermine her judgement and choices.

I would like her to bin these brochures in future

but I doubt she will.

Happily Tall Cat is in residence today,

as my blood pressure has soared

and he is the remedy.

* A graphic but useful expression that has been in the news recently.

White hyacinth

Well worth the wait, 

although I do wonder just how much earlier

I should have started forcing them,

for flowering by Christmas.

Their scent a fresh new greeting

each time I return to the room.

A different perspective

Winter, unlike other seasons of the year,

is a time of looking forward. In Spring and Summer

we are for ever hoping the days will not speed too quickly away,

we long for the violets to continue flowering just a few weeks more, 

we trust the tender green of Spring will not give way too rapidly 

to the density of midsummer,

we hope the lily and the rose will not shed their petals too soon.

In Autumn we look regretfully on the passing of all vivid colour,

we long for the warmth to linger yet a little,

we hope the dahlias will not be cut off by too early a frost,

we dread the day when the swallows are seen no more.

But in Winter it is otherwise.

We do not miss the dead and gone chrysanthemums;

we are almost glad to see the last of them.

We do not wish the leaves to stay on the trees for ever,

nor do we regret the disappearance of the luxuriant summer growth,

for this is a time of expectation,

a period of waiting, or watching, of listening.

Daily we look for the faint stirrings of returning life,

hourly we strain to catch the first notes of the birds' song

and on every sunny day we hope we may find the earliest primrose

or the red stars on the hazel bough.

And though these aspirations and expectations

are often shrouded in mists and fog, yet those who turn away from 

these inclemencies, avoiding the rigours and buffetings of Winter,

 do forgo a part of their inheritance and the beauties only to be seen in

"This precious stone set in a silver sea."

Text taken from Garden and Hedgerow by Ethel Armitage,

plates by Lucy Burton, published 1939.

That voice

or this one

this one,

or this one.

Whichever way - I've been singing it all day.

None of the judges turned round for Bob, but

plenty of other people have jumped into the ring
since his performance on Saturday.

The aquamarine

As found.

And a few paces further on -

the perfect setting.

Made my day. 

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