Autumnmnmnmnmnmnmn

Go on, just do it!

I''m just catching up with the fact that elderberries now ripen late August/September, rather than September/October, as I'm sure they used to. In the good old days. Once again this year, I nearly missed them. Just in time, phew, to make this wonderful syrup.

(if there are still some berries around in our micro-climate of London, there will probably be plenty where you are).

This is delicious diluted with water, with/without lemon added - also good with sparkling water. LG loves it. Also v. good with hot water as an alternative to mulled wine. Will substitute quite nicely for cassis, to make kir.

And additionally - a traditional medieval remedy for chest problems, this is excellent for coughs, colds and sore throats with hot water, with/without added honey, lemon, booze. Its very very high in vitamin C.

What more could you ask? Its dead easy to make, and you can make any amount - just do at least a little, before its too late and I'm sure you'll want to make more.


Elderberry syrup

from Roger Phillips Wild Food book, Pan 1983.


Pick ripe elderberries (recipe says on a dry day - I've picked them in the rain, and not suffered obviously bad consequences).

Any quantity. (see - you can just try a very very little bit, and see if you like it)
Wash and drain.

Strip fruit from stems (a fork is useful for this - and I don't usually worry about all the tiny little bits of stems. Otherwise it would take all day.) (well... hours anyway)

Put into a pan and add just enough water to cover the fruit. Simmer for about half an hour. (or boil rather too rapidly, if like me you are a bit neglectful).

Strain through a jelly bag or muslin. (or a tea-towel, so long as you don't mind the new colour it will gain) (or even a seive, which I've used this year.)

Measure the juice, and for each pint of juice add 1 lb/450g of sugar and 10 cloves.
Heat gently, stirring till all the sugar is dissolved. Boil/simmer for 10 mins, leave to cool - and then bottle.

As easy as that.

This will freeze in plastic bottles, but I usually use bottles with good stoppers (french cider bottles, Grolsch bottles, port bottles) or screw-tops (some olive oil bottles are quite nice) and it keeps perfectly well in a cool dark cupboard - we are just finishing the last bottle from last year.

I had a pic. of my satisfying shining dark bottles, but Blogger says NO. This year I had about 2 pints of juice, and after adding sugar etc. this ended up giving me about 3 litres of syrup.

Off today to see if there are still some berries left, more would be even better.

buzz buzz buzz

Busy busy buzz buzz buzz

Not with work though.
Nor blogging.
Nor buying school uniform. (Its okay, it is bought though).

Excursus:
M went to buy school uniform etc. today, with LG. Despite (actually rather brief) list and ample shopping opportunity, some items were mysteriously not bought. I always thought the function of a list was for reminding one what needs to be bought/done; for checking (?before leaving the shop??) to make sure nothing is omitted. I fail to understand how this happens. Is it "I couldn't be arsed & wanted to get home to my computer" disguised as "Oh dear! how did I forget that?"
Nothing crucial though, all will be ready for the start of school on Weds.
Including the round protractor thingy.

2 visits to TKMaxx within 3 days. Some great goth / skull-embellished clothes and trainers for LG's birthday. OMG she will be 12 soon.

Great visit from RW and her girls & visit to the London Aquarium (picture blog to follow, I'm loving my new(-ish) camera).
Lovely evening with RW and Molly - which involved rifling through some of my button collection - recently added to with some lovely lovely buttons from (lovely) Donna, via a swap.

Guests from Jersey - Dizzy and GOM (not so grumpy at all actually).
Watching and celebration of M's (excellent, interesting, engaging, articulate.....) appearance on BBC TV on Sunday morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're waiting for further offers. (Lets hope they pay him, next time.)

Dizzy and I spent the rest of Sunday making tassels.





























More pictures will follow on my textiles blog.

Work MUST ensue this week, I have marking to do.
Not before I do my tassel blog though - so much more compelling.

UPDATE - for more tassels, click here. (did do work first though :o( )

Tats Tips

CONGRATULATIONS TAT!



You look fabulous in print, 3 (THREE) pages in (new just off the press) Tonic magazine (Oct. edition).

















































Includes Tat's top travel tips.

I hope you can't read the print - because you need to go and buy your own copy.

Jiggity Jig

Home again home again….

… from a good week with my parents.

The first couple of days were hard as my mother was not so good, and slept most of the time. Which makes it seem as though she really is slipping away – and makes you feel as if you should somehow be preparing yourself (how?) for the worst.

But after that, she was much much better – to the extent that we even went to Eastbourne for lunch one day.

We revisited the Hydro – a very genteel hotel previously mentioned in this blog as the kind where one constantly expects Miss Marple or Poirot to appear around the corner. It was M’s first visit. He found it rather disconcerting, feeling that we were contravening some minimum age requirement, and that too long a visit would hasten the onset of arthritis.

Lovely lunch though!

We then cavorted on the beach.
Watched by lots of beady black eyes


Stones... of course, you have to. And yes, I did bring some home with me. Including one perfect tiny speckled birds-egg stone.


The creature from the Black Lagoon.

LG swam, even though it meant swimming in her T-shirt and undies, and changing furtively on the beach!!!!!


My family all arrived on Saturday (brother and sister, with respective families) – completely surprising and delighting my mum – for a wonderful birthday party. Possibly the first ever surprise birthday party in my family. (!) (Yes, really!) Certainly the most precious birthday.

My father had bought a card for her with the following words, by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

I am so glad that you are here.

It helps me to realise how beautiful my world is.


I can find no words to describe how that felt/feels.

Mum said she woke the following morning “brimful of happiness”.


The rest of our visit was spent visiting charity shops, taking afternoon naps, getting early nights (lots of sleep, in fact), sitting chatting/reading/making tassels. (will blog about these, I promise, need to get around to taking pictures….) Relaxing and feeling so very very tired.

So we left my parents both in pretty good form, which makes the leaving bearable. A scan in a week or so will tell us whether or not the chemo is having any beneficial results on the secondaries. In the meantime most days are far better than we might have hoped – and each one is a day we might not have expected to have at all.

And home again home again jiggity jig.

Back to reality – LG begins secondary school in a weeks time.
Must remember to buy school uniform

Must remember to buy school uniform

Must remember to buy school uniform

Must remember to buy school uniform

And a circular protractor thingy.

Our term doesn’t begin for another 3/4 weeks.

I have so far been unable to coax my mind into facing the fact that I WILL, before long, HAVE to do some work. Not that I’ve done much coaxing, to be honest.

RW and her girls are here for a couple of days, which is wonderful, and the best possible excuse not to face up to work for just a little bit longer.

We went to the cinema last night (A Scanner Darkly – v. much enjoyed it) (dozed off just a little at one point – problem with me, not with the film) and it felt just a little chilly in the evening air. PTB – end of summer also approaches.

G&T will be drunk, sheds will be complimented, TK Maxx will be visited.

I will report back later.

Summer time/s ...

... and the living ain't easy.


Well, isn't it quiet in Blogland? - people being on holiday/ in the garden / on the beach / preoccupied / doing other, better, different things..... summer time, different kinds of time ...

Plenty going on though, in other lives, countries, times, realities.
Time can go at such different rates, in different areas of one's life.


This week I have been mostly:

sorting recent vintage button acquisitions

sorting some of the above for a button swap with Donna (little things, great pleasures)

failing to spend time in the garden due to persistent rain
(at least, at the times when I've been up and feeling like gardening)
(but my repairs on leaky water butt seem to have worked, hurrah)
(but of course persistent rain means I don't need it now, doh!)

spending too much time on the computer (games, mostly .... )

bickering with LG DC (most definately DC not LG) - 11 - going on (permanently - pre-menstrual -) 14 years old
(and no she wouldn't like it if I talked to her in that tone of voice and I wasn't shouting actually yet)
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SHOUT?

finishing painting of hall/stairs/landing - started last June - could be worse....

not thinking about work
(who? what? students? marking? essays? timetables? means nothing to me ..... )

not doing housework (hardly any, anyway ... )

making tassels (details will follow, on my other, crafty blog) (yes, its as weird and gratuitous as it sounds)

visiting parents

managing not to drink too much wine
(when there is wine in the house, that is. Not much shopping being done these days).


Easy times, at times.

Not always easy.

I'm doing extremely well in my resolve to work less and live and enjoy life more. To the extent that the house is getting a bit squalid, tbh, and there isn't much food around. In the fridge/freezer that is..... theres always enough in our famously capacious cupboards to keep us gong for at least 2 weeks. A result of being brought up with a well-stocked walk-in larder.

I'm spending time playing games on the computer, leaving the washing up, letting M. do almost all the cooking, ceasing to see dust and dirty windows, becoming hardened the sight of "needs to be done" and almost completely innured to the pig-sty which is LG's bedroom.

(almost)

So life is easy in some respects.

(M cooked a roast tonight. Yummy. But could I throw out the carcass etc.? - as we are going away tomorrow? could I b******. The stock pot is hissing and steaming even now, to make tasty, nutritious, cheap chicken stock to go in the freezer for a meal on our return. A result of being brought up by someone who grew up during the war. Dig for Britain and all that. Sigh. Though I can now sometimes leave food on my plate. If I'm seriously too full. Sometimes. It is an achievement, titter ye not.)

My grandfather fought in WW1. In the trenches at Ypres. Blimus. And there are values which I do value, imbred into me, as a result of all that. But its a dodgy business, inbred values.


Things "at home" are also getting much easier.
No more counselling till Sept., but some corners have been turned, I think, and the view ahead is now brighter. (I think) (mostly)
( :o} )

My mother is also fairly stable and comfortable at the moment. She's having chemo - purely palliative, but seems to be working for now, slowing down the secondaries. She's got v. good pain control, a wonderful Macmillan nurse who visits at home. And its her birthday on Saturday.

I've been buying dresses for her - always small, and recently shrinking because of osteoperosis, most of her is now about size 8. But she can only wear dresses now, not trousers/skirts, loose around her waist because of the main tumour and needs size 18. Maternity dresses are the perfect solution, so I've been shopping on eBay.

I'm also buying headscarves, and looking in my craft books at little crotcheted hats, as the side-effects of the chemo set in.

Not easy. And leaving is not easy, at the end of each visit. And thinking about the future is not easy.

But in the meantime - we have another birthday with her, which we'd anticipated we might have to face without her.

Keep your fingers crossed for her wedding anniversary, which is Sept. 1st.

We're off again tomorrow, myself, LG and M, to spend up to a week with her and prepare (secretly and furtively) for the arrival of the rest of the family for her birthday.
Looking forward to early nights, tassel-making - and just being there.

Moi - according to Pink

I forgot, in my last post (about my vacance francais(e?)) to show you this.




This is me, according to Pink (Tat's 3rd and very artistic daughter).

Can you guess what I was doing?

Only one clue - I wasn't AT ALL as miserable as I might look here!

What a brilliant picture!

Back to reality

Remember this?

Nearly didn't bother posting it, after I eventually found it - not one of The Greatest Songs Ever - but firstly, the words are rather apt actually for my situation (though I've never listened to the words before) and secondly, now you'll be humming it all day. hahaha.

(btw I tried to embed this, but blogger kept telling me the tag wasn't closed... though it looked closed to me... any help from anyone out there?)

Back from Perpignan.

PTB

Grey, rainy and a little on the chilly side in the UK at the moment.

PTB

I gather the weather turned just in time for our return yesterday. I had to open my suitcase on the train and find more clothing to wear. With sleeves.

PTB

Work emails to deal with.

PTB

Missing Tat.

PTB


Enough of that.
Some photos:


Fantastic clouds on the plane over.



Did you know there are cloud-spotters?

Like train-spotters, but devoted to unusual cloud formations.

The second of these pics. reminded me of a Roger Dean album cover, very 70's. Though not nearly psychadelic enough of course.

There was lots of this going on in Tat's pool:
















A bit of this on the beach
















This is LG's purchase from a Perpignan flea market.
I blame the parents myself ...













And my gift to myself.








The only flip-flop to be seen in in Perpignan.



Back to reality now.

Realities.

Another Blogger commented a while back that when someone close to you is dying, it is rather like living in a parallel universe. And it strangely is.

It was hard to come back from France - from a week when I relaxed, switched off (mostly), lounged around, spent lovely time with lovely Tat and less - but still lovely - with Trac (also lovely) (skinny dipping incident to be related hopefully by Trac (?) later ?) - to my various situations at home.

But my mum seems to be as well as we can expect - mostly comfortable, a recent blood transfusion and more chemo seems to have had some beneficial results - and I'll be back down there to see her soon.

So.... my blogging will probably go on being intermittent.

Please don't stop visiting.
(another help request - if my sidebar has slipped to the bottom, please let me know - and tell me which browser you use. Thanx!)

I'll try and find time to visit you too.

News updated

Hair update.

This was LG's hair colour for her last ever day at primary school. What cool parents we are!

No panics over colour this time, we're getting to be old hands at this dying lark.

Major panic about the cylindrical hairbrush tho', which LG managed (somehow - God knows how) to get so thoroughly embedded and entangled in her hair that it took us about an hour, late late late at night, to coax/cut it out. LG was hysterical and shouting at both of us, M. was shouting back (old enough to know better, one might say), I resisted shouting but mouthed certain things at M. over LG's head, not all many of them friendly or polite .... French visitors waited tactfully downstairs, unable to get into the bathroom to perform their nightly ablutions.

Finally sorted out, LG calmed down and in bed, M and I continued a muttered row for some time in the study while french visitors tiptoed discreetly backwards and forwards in the hallway ...

Blimus I need a f*****g holiday.



Last day of school, v. emotional for all.

LG has been with some of these children, in nursery and then school, for 9 years.

NINE YEARS! Thats very nearly an armful!!!!!!

She met some of them on Saturday to go to the cinema. Great reunion (a day after the end of term!!) and great explorations in independence.

Since then she has been mostly dossing in her room, downstairs on the computer, lolling about in her pajamas (even now while I write this, at 6.20pm) and eating these.

Digestive biscuits and peanut butter.


Shed news. Not yet very thoroughly embellished outside (wait for further pics.) but getting to be quite nicely furnished inside.

Under the tie-dye throw is a little chair with built in under-seat cool bag, very handy for the G&T.

I think I need to find a better place for the King - he looks a bit furtive hanging around in the corner there. Doesn't look half so good as he'd look - say - hanging round a cat's neck, or something. Maybe I could catch a sparrow to wear him?

And I need to cover the table with something nice. Maybe a bit of vintage fabric, stuck and then varnished?

See my lovely trug? (I just love the word "trug" and don't get to use it half often enough).

And if I sit in my shed in the evenings and look up, I can see the Milky Way...


Off to Perpignan today, with LG, for a so-much-so-desperately-needed break - can't wait to see you Tat, and all your lovely ferals, and Trac too.

Happy summer to the rest of you, hope its good. Only going for a week. See you again soon.

News

Here is an attempt to make up for my woeful lack of blogging activity recently.
Mostly pictures (phew, relief).

Hair news:
Little Gem's latest hair colour.
Stage A. Trial run, one inch of hair only, less-than-generous application of noxious gunge. Panic! It hasn't taken. It doesn't look any different. I told everyone at school I was doing it. etc. etc. etc.

Stage B. Second application, half a head, half an hour. Panic! Its all gone blonde! does it look okay? what will they say? etc. etc. etc.

Shed news:
My (step)Father-in-law, builder by trade - how very useful - put the shed up in more or less a day. Would have taken us much much much much longer. Good old H. Proper job. I was gaffer's mate and tea-maker for the day. The more hairy arm on the right belongs to M, not H, but as this is the only bit he helped with, this is the only bit of him I'm showing.


Fully erected, tho' unfurnished.


Handy shelves, table etc.













Mother-in-law serving celebratory Cava.














More pictures of furnished and embellished shed will follow in due course.



Family News:
My mother is started on a 3-weekly cycle of (palliative) chemo. No awful side-effects so far - in fact the only side-effect is weird and unpredictable (but apparently not unusual) changes in palate and sense of smell. But her medical care (at home) is wonderful, medication is keeping the pain pretty well under control and she is mostly comfortable - which is as much as we can hope for really.

They had hoped to visit us in London today to see French friends (see below) and my garden and shed. But, given the heat/health warnings for today, they are staying put and we are visiting them instead. I can't help thinking that Mum might never be in my house/garden again.

Life is very strange at the moment.

Tourist News:
our Roquefort Friends (French friends, from the region of... who arrive bringing large quantities of outrageously cheap roquefort, yum yum) arrived Monday evening. Staying till Sunday. Much quaffing, late night eating, pastis, bon homie etc. etc. etc. (but less time for blogging and shedding than I'd anticipated...)

Holiday News:
LG finishes primary school on Friday.
FOREVER!!!!!!!!!
Blimus.

Next Tuesday I will be flying - with LG - to Perpignan to stay with the lovely and wonderful Tat et famille.

Other News:
And this is particularly for Tat. Hope it makes you laugh and cheers you up. I hope you and Trac will be practising.
(The number keys used to play this - on my computer - are those on the main keyboard, not on the numberpad. No 6 and No. 9 are particularly entertaining).

Sheds

Sheds, sheds, all kinds of sheds

where did that come from?

I think it might be to do with "Hair hair, all kinds of hair
Hair on your head, and hair down there" - good old Babette Cole.

Anyway...

... theres a great book, Men and Sheds, devoted to the art of "shedding". Wonderful photos and little thumbnail sketches of sheds and their men - what they do and what they keep in them. From the predictable - tools, workshops, beer etc. - to the less so - collections of bricks, snakes and lizards, milk bottles. From the almost-palatial to the bijou to the historic "grand design" to the nearly-derelict. The book has a few engaging thoughts about the significance of sheds as a refuge, hermit-hole, place of quiet. It also quite specifically sees "shedding" as a male rather than female pursuit.

Tch!

There is one photo of a "female" shed - because the photographer was both female and has a shed - but there was an accompanying disparaging comment about the net curtains she'd put in it. (well, actually, fair enough - net curtains - eeek!!)

"It has been said that a shed is to a man what a handbag is to a woman - both contain all the essentials for surviving in the modern world and in the same way that no decent man would ever consider looking in a woman's handbag uninvited, so no reasonable woman would dream of setting foot in a man's shed." (Blurb from Men and Sheds)

Well, I don't have a handbag and I don't intend to fill my shed with essentials for survival. So there. (And I don't see how a milk bottle collection is an essential for survival)

Here are some pics. of sheds not to be found in this mostly excellent book. These are proper, serious and very manly sheds.

That of my father:















and my brother-in-law:




These are sheds with windows, electricity and carefully labelled storage systems.

I expect my brother' shed is similarly serious and manly, I couldn't get a photo of it in time for this.

This is the shed at the end of our next-door-neighbour's garden - one of my favourite sheds in the world!
A Sikh family used to live there (next door - not in the shed, silly!) and if they had a big family party, they would stay up all night cooking in the shed. And invite us around to share the wonderful food.

Unfortunately its getting a bit racked and ruined now.

Here is our own proper manly shed stuff, such as we possess - under the stairs:



(we have to be very careful that the meter-reading man doesn't get his head cut off by falling saws)

and in our current outdoor "shed", which is small but not bijou, and mostly crammed full of guinea-pig supplies:


You see why I need an alternative, bijou and non-utilitarian shed?

Here are some other "interesting" links about sheds, isn't the world wide web truly a "phenomenon"?
Sheds I'd like
(probably not really)
Readers Sheds
(yes really)
Expensive sheds
(prices start at £4,245)
Dull Mens Club
(not much on sheds actually, but found whilst searching... Has irresistible links such as A History of Folding Chairs, The Duck Tape Club and Big Ben Cam)

It seems sheds have been linked not only to maleness, but to aged men, to depression (if men are separated from their sheds) to "New Blokism", to Men's Health and to Australia.

Apparently "Men have sheds because women have the castle". Indeed, is that right?

So, I wonder, are Mandy's shed, and my shed-to-be symptoms of women yet again taking over one of the last bastions of masculinity? (sane masculinity anyway. Shed-separation can apparently also contribute to dementia.... )

Are there any men out there feeling threatened by my shedding activities?

It has been suggested that "Women are spending too much time in sheds, and not everyone's happy about it". And that "CREEPING egalitarianism has knocked another rusty nail into the smoothly sanded timber of the male ego. The garden shed, once an exclusively male domain, is being colonised by women".

So I'm part of a world-wide trend. We women are a threat to the "mystical covenant" between men and their sheds.

Or is it just that we want to get out of the washing up too?


I think there might be a PhD dissertation somewhere in all this - for an old, dull, male (demented?) Australian person maybe.


Me - I plan to sit in my shed (with tassels) look at the garden and drink tea.

Or possibly, sometimes, G&T.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm just away for a little bitsy while, and everything changes.

Wendy is gone.
Pauline is gone.

Thank goodness for new blogs too, nice to have Dizzy and Geena around.

And Trac is all different and brand shiny new. And will be away soon. ptb. (For us not for her)

New (new-different, not brand-new) stair carpet which looks v.good.

New shed still waiting to be painted and erected. Time and weather need to coincide.

Same old guinea pigs.
Same old moody old argumentative extremely stroppy looking-for-a-fight 11 year-old.
Same old bloody PMT nearly all the bloody time.
Same old heart-ache.
As well as the new one.

Time may change me but I can't trace time.

Gardening is wonderful and therapeutic.
In-laws are a mixed blessing.
Blogging and button- and tassel- making takes my mind off things. For a while.
(btw, anyone out there who will confess to finding me while searching for "orange hippopotamus"? I'd LOVE to know why!!)

But nothing helps as much as friends.
Off to see a v. good friend today.
Back later.

Update

This blog is likely to be a bit inactive over the coming weeks - I'm hoping to keep up with all your blogs and you may see me in your comments box, but I'm likely not be posting much myself.

I'm mostly at my Mum and Dads. Thanks for your get-well wishes for my mother.

No, she wont be ok, and she wont be getting better as she has recently-diagnosed and well-progressed cancer, stomach and liver. She might have months to live, but possibly only weeks.

This is entirely out of a clear blue sky for us - though she is 75, she has been fit, healthy (we thought), very active, not at all like a 75 year old, and of a very long-lived family. You realise how much you are taking for granted when its suddenly pulled from under your feet.

So, being with them is the compulsive priority at the moment. And I do realise how very fortunate I am to be so close to them, and to have this time.

Having said all that, my in-laws are here from next Weds., for a week, and I'll be home more. When they are here, we don't do much except sit around, drink tea, shop, look at purchases, drink tea (and wine - not so bad then).

Lots of opportunities for blogging then? (and shed erections) I hope so ...

missing you already.

Absence

Makes the heart grow fonder.... hmmm. Sometimes maybe.

Missed you lot, thats for sure.

My mum is very ill - I'll be away again this coming week, with her and my Dad. Not very much else is equally/more important at the moment.

But I was home for long enough to:

* catch up a bit on blogging

* water some of the plants in my garden (not all of them. Hose-pipe ban in London, don't you know?)

* go to weaving class and MAKE BUTTONS! yes really! (details/pics on my Niddy Noddy blog) (wonderful Mandy again) [I have a bit of a button fetish, so yes, it is exciting for me.]

* discover that No, M hadn't had enough time (in his 3 whole days) to pop out and buy the extra dye needed to dye an old sheet black for LG (more on this below)

* buy more gin

* do some washing


* fill the bird feeders

































* gloat over new shed which arrived before I got home (hehehe. Not yet assembled. Not yet ready for visitors. Soon.)

* nearly have beer with Trac.

* go into loft and pass down to M bits of handed-down carpet (as in handed down from someone else, rather than simply handed-down from the loft) [still with me?] which are destined for our stairs (something else he'd not been able to get around to) [ though he had phoned the carpet-laying man] {enough brackets yet?}.

Photo of shampooing machine loaned by parents: what a cracking design, eh? Bloody vintage or what?

* Shampoo various bits of carpet. Yes, it did actually function - though it worked its way through a few fuses in the process!!

* do a few bits of WORK. Aaaargh. (as in paid work). Enough of that already.

* catch up a bit more on blogging

* MSN friends I've missed.

* re-charge my phone


* turn dyed {only just in time} black sheet into Grim Reaper costume for LG.

excursus:
LG was "Death" from the Terry Pratchett discworld books, for book week fancy dress competition at school.

M had managed to make an excellent scythe. (Done in haste on Weds. afternoon, scant hours before my return. What happened to Monday and Tuesday, I want to know?) [No, I don't actually.]

LG and I spent Thursday evening (last minute as ever) constructing v. successful large hour-glass which, with cat, completed a great fancy-dress. She was very glad of the excuse for wearing black lipstick to school.

(For other Terry Pratchett readers: I wanted her to take a frying pan in as well - she wouldn't. Hahaha. For non-Terry Pratchett readers: your loss). {The hobbit feet - seen bottom left in this photo - were NOT part of the costume}

The prize went (in her class) to a friend dressed as a dictionary. A very good costume, though not exactly a book character. (but no less so, I suppose, than the numerous Batmans and Karate Kids, and much cleverer than those.) (LG won 2 years ago for a great "Dark Tan" (trap disposal rat) costume - Terry Pratchett again. See - you're really missing something good if you don't read Pratchett.)

LG had a good day, after the initial (and rapidly-rising) panic on the way to school when we didn't, for a while, see any other kids in costume. OH NO!!! What if I've got the wrong day? what if no one else is dressed up? I can't walk down the road, there are people! Somebody might see me! what would you do if I was the only one dressed up? .......

She was fine once we got to the playground and saw lots of other Year 6 children in great costumes. Until the hourglass started coming to bits and spilling cous cous all over the playground..... So, maye not so successful after all?
end of excursus

* go to B&Q with friend and buy paving slabs and painty-wood-preserving stuff for shed. (They didn't have exactly the duck-egg blue I wanted, but got lovely bluey-greeney colour). And lots of other bits and pieces which cost pennies each but mysteriously added up to a horrifying amount.

* go to Boot Fair.



Books and textiles-related stuff, as usual.
But also some shed-related things too. (RHS Veg. book for RW and her allotment).








* fill bird feeders again.

* do more washing.

* start to sort out spare room, ready for arrival of in-laws on 5th. (This, of course, involving still more washing) [and the 5th being the same day that the carpet man will be here oops!]

* take pics, write and post this blog.


Off again tomorrow. I will try to find time to keep up with blogging comments etc. - aged parents have computing technology, but no Broadband... not quite what I'm used to.

Back soon.

Poem for a daughter Mother

I kept this poem ("Poem for a Daughter") when it was published in the Guardian thinking of my own daughter and how she has transformed my life - and me. Its been getting tatty and yellowed on our fridge door along with timetables and learning objectives and shopping lists and magnetic messages and STUFF.

In fact, writing this, I now have to go and take a photo of our fridge door. Is there anything interesting on your fridge?

The magnetic messages say such things as:

"I wish the dangerous orange hippopotamus boy better poop."

"the king is very small so feed that baby buns 4 tea."

"and the loveable old yellow bear plays with the lion who can make beautiful new socks."

You may also have spotted an armadillo fridge magnet.
Naturally.

Here it is, dillo No. 28:

Texas Turkey - because apparently dillos (frequent road-kill in Texas) taste like chicken turkey.

A claim which I don't plan to authenticate.

The experience of being a mother/having a daughter has also immeasureably deepened my love and understanding and appreciation for my own mother.

I will be spending a few days with my mum, and so will be absent from bloglandia for a while. In the meantime, here is the poem:


Poem for a Daughter

by Anne Stevenson

'I think I'm going to have it,'
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
'Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.'
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I've never had you

as you still have me, Caroline.
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart's needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom's end. Yet nothing's more perfect
than that bleating, razor-shaped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman's life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.


(published in 'Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times ed. Neil Astley. Bloodaxe 2005)

Girls' Sheds

The renovation of the end of my garden continued this past weekend (for earlier before and after pictures, click here and here). M and S (Brother in law) both sweltered over erections in the heat.

They fixed the fence and attached trellis across the bottom of the garden.


My sister and I, meanwhile, conscientiously objected to working went to the Clarkes Factory shop where she bought 5 pairs of shoes for £50 - thus narrowly beating my previous purchase of 4 pairs for £45, some time ago (details in a previous post) (couldn't be bothered to do a link). I bought none at all, I was her personal shopper for the morning and also so relieved not to be at home while M. was working in the heat that I didn't need shoes to cheer me up.

I am now good to go, garden-wise.
And inspired by my friend Mandy's garden.

She has always had a fabulous garden, for as long as I have known her. She now also has a new shed.


Scarcely noticeable as you leave her kitchen door and walk past the patio and pond...

At first glance this looks like any old shed ...











.... but no








this is a girl's shed.










In a good way, of course. Mandy said that my house is a bit like a girl's shed - I took it as a compliment.


Both functional (her lawnmower and other tools etc. are stowed inside too) {and string. Watch my textiles blog for an up-coming post about Mandy's wonderful shed-string. Its about as string-like as her shed is shed-like, she is a textiles guru as well as a gardening guru} and I hope attractive to fairies, this girl's shed has given me inspiration for the newly-available end of my own garden.

I have been on-line ordering my own girl's shed this week and I am now eagerly anticipating its arrival.

We speculated on the possibility of a Baba Yaga shed on chicken legs - but I could find none, not even on the world-wide web, not even for ready money.

There are - imagine my surprise -
Baba Yaga candle holders


Baba Yaga lego


Baba Yaga toys


But no Baba Yaga sheds for sale.





I quite fancy this one:
it would make a great witchy shed but unfortunately its not for sale.







Mandy found this shed on the web. Could be potentially very girly. Thats about all that can be said for it. Blimey o'reilly. How many of those do you think they sell each year? Though of course, if we did buy one like this, the RWs could come and live in it. But we'd have no garden left at all then.

So - I've ordered one just like hers. I might paint it greenish or duck-egg bluish... what do you think? Bluish or greenish? girly or witchy?