enter the dragon

We had Spring weather yesterday, sun, sleet and rain in rapid succession, repeat.

We are running out of coal for the fire, and altho the house is probably warm enough most of the time I am going to have to go into rehab to be weaned off the cheerful flames dancing in the grate.

I tend to only own boots and sandals - I don't want to be dealing with that in between bit.

Daughter also had snow in Nevada again this week, after a bright warm spell, but it was obviously concentrated, serious snow with which someone [s] could create wonders.

live on the edge

Went down to the Ferry cafe again for lunch, lots and lots more cholesterol. {Eventually i will learn how to spell it] Even with my statin armour i didn't eat the batter, but I did have quite a lot of chips, tho I believe they are bad for arthritis, but sometimes you just have to live dangerously. I try to avoid all that family, something about enzymes, but I wish I didn't believe it, as it also thus forbids tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, and peppers.

It was a bright day again, sun glittering on the sea, so much so that you could hardly look at it.

Saw M there, looking like a Valkyrie striding the sea wall with Henry the Labrador. She reckons she has lost 2 stone thanks to her 3 hour rampages, marching from Felixstowe and back along the coast, she doesn't have the chips either, so that must help.

The little stall opposite sells fresh fish, locally caught, maybe not the sword fish. I don't much care for fish myself, but it is improved if they have just pulled it out of the water. Poor fish.

This is the little jetty that leads to the ferry to take passengers over to Bawdsey on the other side. So I guess this isn't really the sea, it is sea water but there are sand spits and stuff on this part of the coast, keeping the vast cargo ships far out on the horizon before they risk nosing into the docks. Lots of notices along the beach proclaiming it an ASBO area for speed boaters. Presumably they are usually going too fast to read them tho.

trip out

It is some years since I have been in a Mcdonalds. I was too early for the film, so decided to live dangerously. I instantly remembered that slight feeling of panic trying to choose which queue and what to order.........however now my kids are no longer pounding my ear drums so I was able to concentrate, breath and think at the same time.

I stuttered out my long forgotten mantra, veggie burger, fries and coke with an apology for my frantic stare, explaining i had not been on these premises for many years.

The lady took my order - and pity on me, told me to go and sit down and she would bring the food over on a tray!

Almost persuaded me to ask for a concession ticket in the movie house, but I am not going to admit my age to some flibberty gibbert - so well padded by cholesterol, and defended by my statins I sat in solitary state in the cinema and laughed and cried my way thru Slumdog Millionaire.

Brilliant, unexpectedly lived up to the hype for once. Always encouraging to see something well made. Torture scenes meant i had to close my eyes sometimes but otherwise a very good film IMO and so colourful.

death & despair

This was the end of our Tony Blair.

A few years ago the village had a competition to make scarecrows, to be placed on public view and judged as to artistic and maybe sarcastic merit.

Local lads expressed their enthusiasm by throwing many down the hill, after a night too long in the pub, so the communal spirit dried up and became rather prune faced.

We couldn't quite bear to eviscerate Tony, so he hung about for some years getting increasingly dilapidated and earning stinging epithets such as straw man, feet of clay, jerk etc.

Our Tony had a head then, but he lost it about the time we invaded Iraq and I realised I had been thoroughly hoodwinked and had likewise had to accept my jerkhood.

While Tony burned I was working on my new piece for summer exhibition.

We have to take a look at the area around the exhibition centre, an old Victorian Maltings and produce something relevant.

I decided to Do the arches

They are tall and elegant, which at the mo, my piece isn't. M gave me some lovely silks which I have juggled into position, but then I thought I would trap them behind a chiffon so i could set about stitching them to death.

Demise arrived earlier than I expected, unfortunately, as the lovely sheen has gone dull and all sorts of doggie hairs, fluffs and detritus have been stuck down as well.

Oh dear.

animal kingdom

Two males - masters of their territory.

Aggers doesn't seem to miss his sister, but he does make a big fuss of Hattie the dog whenever he gets the chance, washing her ears and face with big satisfied purrs.

Hattie puts up with it for a while, but then shakes off the attention and potters off to sit nearer the fire.

Aggers is not a nice cat, IMO, he ate a mouse last week and left only the tiny surprised little face on the mat to greet me in the morning, as I tottered down stairs.

garden of eden

The bird of paradise plant in the conservatory has produced it's 3rd flower, in a desperate attempt to prove it really is summer [which I guess it is in South Africa] here it is a cold and blustery day, tho admittedly it was sunny this morning.

This was my view of the garden in the summer, but I must admit to some artistic licence.
I have given over the gardening [weeding] to the Retired Person. He is digging away like a human Tonka truck I have to shut my eyes and wait till May when the next village has a Plant Fair, then i can buy some more plants to put in the bald spots.
I definitely won't complain at the mo as he is hacking manfully thru the couch grass and creeping buttercup with much energy and purpose.
When I lived in N London when the children were smallish there was a park a short walk away. It was called Paradise Park, which must have been some sarcy counsellors idea of a joke, as it was a horrible parched area - heaven only to paedophiles and junkies. The boys wisely played football in the side streets.
There was a city farm tho, further along, a community project with goats, pigs, a cow and donkeys, probably chickens and ducks. Daughter saw her first birth there as a kid emerged from a nanny goat, presumably she wished grandson had arrived with such ease.
Wow I have just googled it, things have moved on -See the magic of a caring government -

"Paradise Park Children’s Centre, a flagship new building in Islington has won the prestigious national award for ’Building for Sure Start’ at the annual Sure Start Partners in Excellence awards”. The £1.1 million building, which is nearing completion is a partnership between Sure Start Hillmarton and the Islington Play Association. The scheme was funded by provided by Sure Start, Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative, London Development Agency, Islington Council and charitable donations.
A striking feature of the building is vertical green walls with plants growing from two sides of the building, supported by recycled rainwater. The green walls as well living brown roofs will increase the wildlife inhabiting the Park.
The building incorporates a community café linking the Centre with the park and the wider community. The children's centre is one component of a master plan for the regeneration of Paradise Park and Greenspace will be locating a park ranger in the building and looking after the green wall."

Wow again.

weather men

Chalk Head is a good friend of my son. When we were in San Francisco in December he rushed up in his loony way and announced he would be visiting us with his new wife, so Saturday there they were.

Americans doing the World Tour, I must admit we Europeans get a bit snide, until we go to the States then it all makes more sense,

We were lucky it was a lovely day, sunny and bright and after a couple of months trolling thru Europe in clouds and rain they thought we lived in Paradise, or at least a Disney Cartoon with fluffy sheep, moo cows, oyster catchers and even the odd cuckoo drilling in the woods.

The boat yards are messy, and they looked a bit confused.

Contrast between spending time and money in the States - so it shows, and aiming for the understated awe shucks approach here - where a definite effort is made to look as if one really hasn't made an effort.

CH had an emergency appendectomy soon after they arrived in Bangkok, so the first week of their honeymoon was spent with him in hospital attached to tubes and wifey sleeping in a chair.

Fortunately he had taken out super duper health insurance- for the first time- so had millionaire treatment.

They showed us lovely pics of the Eiffel Tower and Gaudi's cathedral, Amsterdam's canals [as an ex bicycle messenger he was particularly taken with plethora of latter trilling their bells] but every shot was dripping with rain.

I could feel their pain. Husband No 1 lived here for years but could never come to terms with the interminable cloud cover, specially when we lived in Carlisle on the NW coast.

Probably only the wetter, greyer area is Wales, oh no Ireland is wetter I imagine.

Husband No1 was a New Yorker, [lower east side] thus had a volubly expressed opinion on the subject of British weather, especially after a 6 pack or 2 and spinning Dylan for a few days.

Now I live on the English East coast and it is often bright, but when we stayed in Reno I had a yearning to move next to g'son and relax under the clear blue skies, maybe find a coffee shop to show my work..........but I couldn't afford the health insurance.

colour scheme

Us S.L.A.P.P.E.R.S. [Stitchers, Lacemakers And Patchworkers Practise Embroidery Regularly in Suffolk] arranged to drive to Cottenham [near Cambridge] to see their latest Textile show. It is on every year, - a couple of local groups exhibit but more exciting there are many many stalls, attended by encouraging people frantic to sell us threads and fabrics, so we look forward to it immensely.
Unhappily life has a habit of slapping your face just when you are smiling cheerfully, Isabel the tutor who taught most of us to take up a needle with menaces, found her husband dead, and the funeral was Friday.
L was nominated to represent us.
Then M's son who was appearing as Wishee Washee in pantomime and suddenly needed her to supervise the refreshments.
R's daughter decided to visit and could push the heavy furniture into new places for her........................ A offered to take me on Saturday, but I decided i just had to Do It! enough of interference from Fate, however weighty.



The colours were very therapeutic.




The only fat fly in the face cream was that I had a migraine and was in a very bad temper. I had already taken 2 magic pills on previous days and had only one left of the rest of my allowance for the rest of the month, so I staggered around growling clutching paracetamol and watching the clock until i could take another dose - and forced healing cash into willing hands.
I also bought some paper covered wire, quite thick so that it holds its own shape, from which to make more figures or even "vessels". We each have to make one for TAGS summer exhibition. It could be anything from a bowl to a pencil holder i suppose, I am thinking of a pregnant woman with a lid that lifts from her stomach, but what to put inside?
Then there was this Organza stuff that the printer, it is claimed won't eat and get indigestion. And some blue and purple dyed scrim, that was perhaps a mistake, but beautiful colours and cheapish.
And finally a pack of dyes and brief instructions. I have a book but I can't concentrate long enough to get to the end of the chapter.




This is some of what I carried home in triumph after a mediocre lunch at


Retired Person,who had filled the idle hours walking Hatters, disapproves of the beer, but any port in a storm, oasis in a desert, etc.
We drank a toast to Isabel in the hopes that the colour would return to her life in time.

The end of Bob

The construction is finished and there is now more room in the manshed.
Always good news for the woman.

fresh mud

On our doggy walk down to the river yesterday we could step off the usual track and keep going till we reached half way across - without walking on water...........save that for another day.

The causeway we walked down is called The Hard locally, at really low tide it begins to turn into The Soft with squelchy oozing mud which can be very beautiful in its swirls and squirls, but not so lovely on Hattie the dog's paws when we get home.





This tyre must have lived here about as long as me, with similar results.

Cold wet mud is not usually invigorating, but somehow this was different.
I was fed up when we left home, but just taking a 90 degree turn out of the usual made things seem promising again. Which is a good thing as this winter has been so hard, and long.

I am obviously going cabin crazy waxing lyrical about mud.

Bobbed

Retired person has taken up a new temporary career as Bob the Builder.
After buying the Big Tool Box in which to stash his garden tools, [so he can become Shed Man in comfort], he realised he would have to make a level platform for it to stand on [when it is put together]. So after much study and trips to the Manly Shops he has produced the necessary.

Very satisfying.

bouquet

Couldn't resist a snap of the first daffodils, which have been waving valiantly at me from down the bank. They get the morning sun, but also the morning frost - so they are brave as well as encouraging. Clumps of snowdrops all over the place, some are hiding behind my "birthday suit"- with gnomes. It must be protected from frost down there as I expected the terracotta to snap in the first winter, but she just keeps accumulating moss and gnomes.

These snowdrops are along one of the dog walks, every year they storm back, total beauty.
Just to finish on the theme, some of the valentine roses. Forced no doubt, in so many ways, but once they have settled in and loosened up - another beauty.

chish and fips

One sunny day last week we drove to the coast and had fish and chip lunch at the Felixstowe Ferry cafe, famous for same. Now I am on the wonderful statins I can eat what I like.........as long as I don't mind being fat as a barrage balloon.
I had line caught cod [I am sure it died much happier knowing that it was so special, or is it a long line with many hooks, they can be cunning these fishermen] deep fried [oh the guilty pleasure] in golden batter, and fat, hand cut chips, similarly golden and piled to provide a vast crunchy cushion for the fish, - brown sauce of course.
So fresh, so cheap, just as well it is not nearer.
The cafe is a rather ugly shed, with elderly plastic chairs and tables within spitting distance of the shore, where the foot ferry arrives from Bawdsey, and local people park their boats on the shingle.
Last visit was in the summer, we sat outside with Hattie the dog, mostly because the cafe was full - an interesting mix of the old and grey - and rather stout bikers in black leathers and tattoos.
Both visits were made in the sun, one when it beat down with enthusiasm and last week when it turned the heat down to a shy glimmer.

We walked Hatters along the shore to a big grey old Martello Tower from Naploeonic times. No longer do we fear the French, we are together in the European Market, tho not to the extent of changing to the Euro. The Tower is now a home, designer windows, comforting thick walls still withstand the cold. Global warming may play havoc with the landscaped garden however as the sea rises round our coast.
Hopefully the cafe will remain high and dry and deep frying for many years.

children's stories

This is the wall my daughter and I painted in the nursery to welcome grandson. It wasn't my idea, one does not however argue with a lady about to pod.
She obviously believes that her son should be brought up in an atmosphere of teeth [as I once heard someone? say].
She also requested some fairies, one of which you may be able to discern riding the horn. I do miss her enthusiasm now I am home in the land of understatement. If it happened here we would probably have Social Services hotfooting to her door.
Last week we were informed by that august journal The Sun [arsewipe tabloid with a nice line in cheeky headlines] that a twelve year old boy has fathered a child with a fourteen year old girl. The boy looks about 8 and the girl about 40 which adds to the gaiety of the nation.
It's happened before, as with every shock horror.
Last time, in the 90s, the kids eventually got married, still are, still with their twins in the house that they are buying.
Never can tell, unless they now find they can't afford the mortgage in these interesting times.

cold comfort

I am thoroughly fed up and had enough of this cold weather. I have 3 jumpers on and that is not enough, I refuse to wear a woolly hat in the house.
I know Oportuknitty and family got snowed in for days, and emerged sane and intact. I do not have the survival skills.
Perhaps I would not have made that long journey in a leaky boat across the Atlantic to a new life [of course I wouldn't, I get sea sick on the ferry]
We have not even had much snow it is just COLD. The sun is shining - it LIES, when I go out it is still cold.
I have to walk the doggy every day, she doesn't even wear shoes. Where was I when they handed out .............parents who lived in warm countries.
Retired Person is out hacking down rampant ivy. He gets very smug as he repeatedly fills our brown bin and even the neighbour's brown bin. I would prefer a bonfire, but I know my front would be warmed by the flames but my backside would freeze, so i won't play.
The Lace Collars piece and the thing about women working thru the ages in the factory [bet it was cold in there in the winter] has gone off to the Steam Engine museum ready for exhibition in Spring, when the sun will be shining. Will it still be cold tho?
Yes.
ALSO I can't add a suitably picture of me, dog, RP, anyone perishing in this weather because this computer apparently has Opinions and won't pick up pics any more.
What is happening to the world?!

Ah ha yes I can is I use another Browser.

"There's Always Something You Can Do" [Lemony Snicket]

love is a many splendoured thing

So on Friday we went like two bats out of hell up the A12 to Chelmsford. Ruth was driving, she has been driving - fast - for sixty+ years so I talked a lot and tried to keep my brake foot from crashing down onto the upholstery.

Obviously we got lost when we left the A road and tried to follow the garrolous map that had been written more like a novel than a set of instructions by Janette. I am an Essex girl, but we visited parts I never knew existed.

Finally we circumnavigated the various dank fields and villages in our way and ended up at the required Industrial Estate.

Not promising.

We could see our breath it was so cold, however no complaints as the rest of the country seemed to be under several foot of snow, whereas we had to peer out at the almost warm bright winter sun as we thundered Northwards.

The huge hanger we entered was freezing and forbidding, full of chunks of Victorian commemoration stones and lumps of unidentifiable metal which once belonged to something else, and made it work.

Escorted up the metal stairs we found the rest of the gang, plus curator Dot; this was where Chelmsford museum houses some of it's collection, - Dot should check the factories act, no-one should have to work in such cold.

The pics above are examples of what we examined, as examples of Romance in the Store Cupboard [not my title].

In other words tokens of love.

The silk painted postcard tells it's own story. The theme became quite miltary, which was surprising. The Heart Shaped pin cushion was made by soldiers perhaps at the end of the Boer War.

Earlier donations were often not accompanied by notes, except one family that pinned details to their bequeathed textiles in the C18th. There was a tiny cushion, made by the lady of the house from a waistcoat her husband wore when she first met him. Also a small bag shaped like a Bishop's mitre, for what use..............to hold his chess pieces of course.

The pin cushion to be given to a young mother, was definitely not to be given till after the birth as it was ?believed that each pin would be a pain, if it arrived before. It reads Bless the child and Save the mother.

The little sergeant was made by a saddler, away in the First world war, very surreal.

These are the Three [Dis]Graces - work in progress.
I have to upload them on Yahoo because my Internet Explorer won't upload pictures anymore from websites!
Also I write sometimes on my laptop in front of the fire [which is bliss in this cold weather] but the pics are on the big computer in here. The laptop will upload pics from websites, but the pics I need in this case have not leapt onto that machine because I can't remember the sequence to let them get thru the wall into next door room.
Apparently it is a Microsoft problem - so that guy should stop saving the world from measles or whatever for a few mins and get back and sort it out.

This is a work in progress...............I have now stitched the circles on so they are circular,which should help. The pale portraits are of women who used to work in the Steam engine factory in Nineteenth century, printed onto fabric.

The circles are hand made lace curtains from...........various times, when women made lace collars at home, rather than stitched them in strange looking positions at variance to the makers intentions.

The collars were donated by friends [I think most people with trunks in attics or cellars will find a few] and the quilt is an old worn one from the Retired Person's great aunt, either Ethel or Elizabeth, as it is signed with stitched initials in the corner.

We found it in an outhouse when we moved into this house, wrapped round an old musical box of similar vintage to the collars.

The quilt has been patched thru the years with increasing lack of sensitivity as to colour. I would guess the RP's grand dad did the last patching, he learned to sew and knit at Village Board School in the late 1800s. His patches were secure, but rather random. In a way they expressed the quilt history. or her-story and his-story but I couldn't bring myself to leave the navy blue with spots on.

Obviously they covered worn areas and holes which are also evocative, so i have sort of mini darned them with running stitch, without totally obliterating the holes.

Stitching colleagues suggested using the lace collars as picture frames and the whole thing is coming together.

I am still not sure if the end result will live up to the concept.................hazy recognition of the continuum of women who sew, ...........maybe.