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3BT – flooding/river, hooks, sparkle

27/12/2015 / / 0 Comments

1. All across Yorkshire & Lancashire, there is major flooding including up and down river from us. The worst happened in darkness and it’s only with the light of a bright day that we truly see the extent of it. The lower main road near our old house in Leeds (and one of our main routes into the city now) is a river, and the junction we used nearly every day back then is beyond waist deep. It’s terrible but on a sunny day, beautiful too: the blue sky and arches of the railway bridge mirrored on the ground.

1b. We become looky-loos closer to home on our usual dog walk – the river banks collapsed at the bottom of the hill, flooding gardens, playing fields, a pub and the road. It’s receded from the road by the afternoon but we – and the dozens of other people out taking pictures – are still largely surrounded by lakes of standing water on either side of the carriageway. The river is twice its regular width and carrying logs – and even an old fridge – as it rushes by beneath us.

2. I swap the dining room curtains from regular little curtain hooks to the long Ikea ones – they hold the tape so much straighter. This is strangely pleasing!

3. The mist makes sparkles in the torch light, draws lines in the cold blue security light across our neighbours’ deck.

3BT – monsters and other characters/really?, new waterfall/young & old, mat, felt

26/12/2015 / / 0 Comments

1. Z distracts me from my ranting about government housing policy by asking me to play. We draw monsters, a dapper gent & a high heeled cowboy playing Consequences, a space scene and a robot – the latter inspiring a minute long robot dance party in the other room. Much better than complaining about planning law!

1b. Z tells me I’m good at drawing. This is one of the best compliments I’ve had all year.

2. A new waterfall runs down the hillside.

2b. We meet an overactive springer enjoying the mud who is a bit too much for Lily – the old lady lab who finally catches up with us is much more her speed.

3. The mat looks a lot neater and smarter than we’d imagined.

4. The moment when wool roving turns into felt.

3BT – brouhaha, circles/following tail wagging procedure, a more relaxed tail, virtual trains

25/12/2015 / / 0 Comments

1. My new favourite French word: “un brouhaha”.

2. Drops making circles in the puddle that straddles the road. They overlap like the circles I was drawing last week with M.

2b. The (dog we call the) Major is standing outside his garden gate, keeping an eye on the empty road. He eyes us as we approach but he recognises us too. As John crosses to him to say hello, his tail rises in a steady motion and it is only when it is vertical that it begins to wag. As always, his fur is softer than we think.

3. Lily’s tail as John dries her. Later, she smells like shampoo.

4. I nerd out directing my little virtual trains while John watches films upstairs. I upgrade all my mega-loops with relative efficiency. This makes me happy.

3BT – laugh, stripes, stay/match

24/12/2015 / / 0 Comments

1. We both make each other laugh even more than usual with bad jokes and clever puns (or vice versa on the adjectives, it’s hard to judge).

2. Black muddy stripes on a dark blue towel.

3. Lily stays on the sofa when I go downstairs to the office. It’s unusual being on a different floor from her (when there is only the two of us in the house) but when I creep back upstairs to check on her, she’s fast asleep in a ball.

3b. I notice the blue of the new cushions perfectly matches the blue of Lily’s sofa. A stylish coincidence!

Twelve Days of Thank You Letters

24/12/2015 / / 3 Comments

 

…A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Dear Darling My True Love,

Thank you so much for the partridge in a pear tree. I never say no to more fruit trees and the partridge will be a fun addition to the garden too.

Love you for always and forever.
 

…Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Dear Darling My True Love,

Thank you for the pair of turtle doves and the extra pear tree/partridge combo! The doves have already made a nest in the leylandii and I’ll watch them throughout the year and think of you. Love you.
 

…Three French Hens, Two Turtle Doves and…

Dear My True Love,

Thanks for the French hens, the turtle doves and the third pear tree/partridge combo. Can’t wait to eat some homegrown eggs alongside my potentially bounteous pear harvest! I’ll make you the most delicious breakfast, my darling.
 

…Four Calling Birds, Three…

Dear My True Love,

Calling Birds! You remembered how I told you about waking up to bird song in the morning! Oh how sweet of you! xx
 

…FIVE GOLD RINGS, Four…

Dear My True Love,

Five gold rings – now you really are spoiling me! Love you! For this, I’ll make you an omelette – there wouldn’t be any shortage of eggs now the coop is full of hens.
 

…Six Geese a-Laying, Five…

Dear My True Love,

How kind of you think of providing a little variety: now in addition to my nine – no twelve – French hens laying eggs, I’ll have geese eggs too! And five more gold rings – one for every finger – wonderful!
 

…Seven Swans a-Swimming, Six…

Dear My Love,

Swans! Oh you are a creative giftgiver! My pond isn’t very big but they’ll look beautiful it, one at a time. I do hope they won’t fight with the dozen geese milling around the lawn – they can break your arm, you know.

PS. I know I said I’d never say no to more fruit trees but the garden is getting pretty full now.
 

…Eight Maids a-Milking, Seven…

Dear My Love,

I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive when the doorbell rang today – the birds you’ve been sending have been getting larger and larger, I was worried you’d send an emu or eight of them! Ha ha ha!

The milk will be a welcome change from all the eggs. Oh, I don’t want to sound ungrateful but I’m eating eggs for every meal – what having 18 hens and 18 geese – and it would be nice to be able to shake it up a bit with custards and whatnot. (I think Nigel Slater has a recipe for pigeon quiche – I’m sure partridge or dove would work the same way.)

PS. Do I … do I own these women now? Are they slaves or do I have to pay them? Do you think they’ll accept eggs, pears or gold rings in payment?
 

…Nine Ladies Dancing, Eight…

Dear My Love,

More ladies! More birds! More rings! More pear trees. You don’t do Christmas by halves, do you?

I’d write more but it’s hard to hold a pen with all these rings on my fingers.
 

…Ten Lords a-Leaping, Nine…

Dear love,

Men this time. And more of all the rest. Gosh. I really don’t know what to say any more.

Yes, yes, I do: I’m going to be honest. You know when I said that I wanted something special for Christmas? I was thinking of an iPad, or that for you to book us on the cruise around the fjords that we saw advertised in the back of the magazine that comes with the newspaper – that’s why I told you, on several occasions, how many holiday days I had left to take before the end of March. I thought we could go away somewhere nice, somewhere a bit different, somewhere we could make Slartibartfast or dead parrot jokes and have some precious time together.

Now I’m going to have to spend those holiday days cleaning up bird poo. It’s *everywhere*. The chicken coop is filled up every morning and the geese, swans, partridges and doves shit everywhere. I tried to get some of the maids to help me with it but they refused, saying they’re only here to milk. I pointed out that there isn’t anything to milk – it’s not like I’ve got room for cows or goats (and if I did they’re wouldn’t be anything to eat, now the two dozen geese have stripped the lawn bare) – but they refused to budge, saying their job description just said “a-milking” and nothing about poo-shovelling. You haven’t so much got me a gift as bestowed upon me a begrudging, pedantic workforce.

The dancing ladies aren’t any help either. Yes, they look pretty doing their twirly but terraced houses weren’t built with ballrooms. There are eighteen of them now, doing endless waltzes and quadrilles in the hallway, or using the bannister as a ballet barre. It makes answering the door quite a chore – I’ve had more than one delivery man snap at me for taking too long and got called an “ungrateful bitch” when I replied that I wasn’t exactly in a rush to sign for 23 more sodding birds.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Perhaps that UPS guy was right, I should be thankful that you’ve gone to all this effort. I guess I’m just tetchy because I haven’t been sleeping that well recently. I keep waking in the night feeling like the down duvet you got me for my birthday is smothering me. And the songbirds make a terrible din outside my window from before dawn and that wakes up the swans, which wakes up the geese and so on.
 

…Eleven Pipers Piping, Ten …

Dear you.

Do you never want me to sleep again?

Pipers. Piping. PIPERS. PIPING.

I’ve already had the neighbours round complaining – they were just about coping with all the birds in the garden but they say the pipers are the last straw and they’re going to the council. Not just for a noise complaint but for overcrowding too. With this last bunch, there are 91 of us living in this two-bed through terrace. They would be eating me out of house and home if it wasn’t for all the eggs.

As if that wasn’t enough, one of the jumped up Lords knocked over a vase of flowers and one of the ladies slipped on the water while in the middle of a demi-plié. She’s suing now – not him, but me. Says I don’t provide a safe dancing environment. A court date has been set for February, bang in the middle of my work leave, when we could have been navigating the inlets around the Scandinavian coast.

Right now, I’m fuming. One fumer fuming.
 

…Twelve Drummers Drumming, Eleven Pipers Piping, Ten Lords a-Leaping, Nine Ladies Dancing, Eight Maids a-Milking, Seven Swans a-Swimming, Six Geese a-Laying, FIVE GOLD RINGS, Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens, Two Turtle Doves and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Dear Sender

return-to-sender

3BT – to the plot/decant/coir/t-shirt weather, pale but not bland

23/12/2015 / / 0 Comments

1. I make the most of the limited sunshine by going to the allotment. I’ve not been for a couple of weeks – it’s not stopped raining for long enough in daylight to go – but I’m pleased to see it’s not doing too badly: waterlogged but otherwise faring well. I work for a couple of hours – taking down the last of the pea & bean supports, pruning back fruit bushes & removing the dead leaves from the strawberry plants and finally digging over half of one of my long beds & cheekily sowing some spare broad beans seeds (it’s a little late for overwintering them but it’s so mild that I thought it was worth it). It’s clearly a rest period for the plots but by the time I go home for lunch, they look a little neater.

1b. Decanting water from one barrel to the more sheltered one. Something about it scratches a thirty year old memory – of playing at the water table on a hot day in infant school.

1c. Breaking up a coir block with minimal water: it flakes into rich brown fibres as I scrape at the surface.

1d. T-shirt weather for digging on the shortest day of the year.

2. Lunch is very pale but not bland: the turkey has a rich flavour, as does the cheese, and the toast is almost nutty in its browner spots.

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