reading – Page 2 – Louisa Parry

3BT – skin tingles, head tickles, dusk chorus

1. I’m too hot but the room is cool. The air tickles my skin and I feel equilibrium returning.

2. Boron follows me into the bathroom and I ask him if there is anything he needs – there is food, water and he’s just had some milk. He rubs at my legs to say he just wants a bit of love. I take him back out to the sunny window seat and he purrs and purrs while I kiss his head and rub his chest.

3. After dinner (the first we’ve eaten inside for nearly a week), I take my book outside. Around me the world slowly gets cooler and suddenly all the birds start singing their pre-dusk songs. The cat on my knee and the dog by my side watch with tails wagging as the woodpigeons divebomb past us as they gather together for the night.

3BT – new project, on anti-cry patrol, quiet time

4/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. She started but didn’t finish embroidering the linen table cloth. For 50p, I take on the challenge.

2. After giving Katherine hell for a week, poorly Joe is all smiles as I push him around the supermarket. It’s the exciting boingy hair and buy one get one free offers that get his interest.

3. While John watches Star Trek in the living room, I spend the evening on the sofa in the dining room reading, with a cat on my belly and a dog by my side. A wonderfully relaxing end to a mostly wonderfully relaxed week.

3BT – spectrum, mid-afternoon break, menacing

2/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The purple dye transforms all the items but each ends up a different colour depending on its fabric composition and soak time. The colours range from dusky pink to mottled heather and glossy aubergine. The wool yarn, the point of the dyeing session, is a muted grape – I like muted colours so it’s perfect.

2. We drink tea and chatter. The animals pad around us before stretching out in the sun.

3. I mis-read “violent seas” as “violet seas” and when I notice the error, prefer my interpretation of the line.

3BT – light/dark, improvisation, pillow purr

27/5/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

Between illness and busy-ness, May has been a tough month – I need to start Three Beautiful Thing-ing again to refocus on the good bits!

1. I sit in a pool of light in the woods reading about mysterious things in the dark depths of the sea.

2. We’ve left it too late to go to the shop before dinner but John improvises and it’s lovely.

3. The purring of the cat curled around my head drowns out the white noise of the rain.

3BT – once our own, the afternoon’s colours, nightmare-inducing

2/5/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. It’s still early for Armley and the woods are our own again. I tell Lily about the adventures the cats got up to when they lived here. It feels like a million years ago now. I thought I’d never been able to let it go but it’s been surprisingly easy.

2. The dusky pink blanket on the rich blue sofa. The stove’s orange window. The lilac flowers on her shoe.

3. After a week of fighting it, I eventually give into my growing exhaustion and all over aches. I spend the whole late afternoon/evening reading. Amongst other things, I read John Christopher’s ‘The Death of Grass’ from cover to cover. Like John Wyndham, the UK location makes it feel startlingly real and at one point, I turn to John to report that Leeds has been destroyed by an atomic bomb. “Well then,” he says, “I guess we should stay away from the bottom of the garden.”

3BT – those glorious days, bugs & shoots, happy crimes

6/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. I stay in bed longer than intended, re-reading ‘How I paid for college’ by Marc Acito. It’s one of my favourite books because the spirit reminds me of the best bits of my own youth – although there are less illegal antics and crazy Austrian step-mums in my story.

2. When I finally do get up, I potter in the porch. I get rid of the dead chilli plant that’s been a breeding zone for bugs for the last few weeks and note which of the houseplants have shutdown for winter. At the far end of the porch though, it’s more positive – the black seed trays are spotted with tiny green shoots, the start of next year’s harvest.

3. John keeps randomly saying how much he loves our new house/kitchen/bedroom/garden. After one such exclamation, I tell him he keep saying stuff like that. “I’m just dead happy,” he says with a smile, “is that a crime?”

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