Empty Road - The A34 is strangely empty this week. I think working people without children who are tied to school terms have gone abroad en masse.
The Road from Damascus - Very readable. One paragraph describes my home life to the letter. I didn't know my life was so much a classic case of whatever-it-is. The cause was different in the book, but the result is identical.
I think I need to start again from the beginning, to read about the father/mother/son/daughter relationships a second time. I skipped some sections, but that's ok.
This is getting to be a theme, I have just had a look at another book I want to write some notes on, and I realise I want to start again with that one too. One step forward and several steps sideways!
Crickets - Our latest film was The Lemon Tree. Out of nowhere came the crickets making their endless noises at night, just like they did in the South of France in the summers when I was little. I love it when something arrives from nowhere, a complete surprise, a reminder of something I'd forgotten I loved.
Giggling - Another film I went to recently surprised me even more with the giggling of the men in one section. I recognised their giggles... How can that happen? I don't know them, they are actors, from elsewhere. The film was very serious etc etc, but I came away with that instead.
Showing posts with label A34. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A34. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
Monday, 19 January 2015
Forrester Bess - Icon - A34 crash
Forrester Bess
I don't usually do this. Just seeing the pictures in the article I am linking to has done some strange things to my mind. The pictures are so simple and intense. They remind me of times I spent at an art table maybe 10/12 years ago.
We would go over there and paint whatever needed to be painted. I recognise that need to put things down. Seeing the other man do his painting in his own world was helpful to see. We didn't have to talk to each other or do anything at all in fact. He put his paint right across big sheets of paper with a heavy roller.
I have had to do some writing after seeing these pictures briefly.
Icon
My aunt Caroline's things came to me yesterday, via my brother driving up with a car load. So now I have a small icon. Unreadable script. I shall have to google image various possible scripts to find out which one it is, then type it into google translate using the appropriate keyboard.
When a person is alive their things are around them. The person turns up at family parties and smokes. When they are dead they things arrive in my house, item by item. I can sit on their chair, stir my soup with their wooden spoon and look cautiously at an icon with its patterns of dots over the metal.
Massive crash
The A34 was shut southbound today because a car transporter went through the crash barrier and right onto the grass by a rising slope over beyond the far side of the other carriageway. It met a van as it went I hear.
We missed this by 15/20 minutes. Do I drive more slowly because of this? Keep my distance more? Pump up my tyres more often?
The people I was due to see this morning had been hoping I was ok. So these drives day after day cause anxiety to others. I can't do anything differently apart from moving house to Kidlington for the next 2 1/2 years. That might be healthier.
I don't usually do this. Just seeing the pictures in the article I am linking to has done some strange things to my mind. The pictures are so simple and intense. They remind me of times I spent at an art table maybe 10/12 years ago.
We would go over there and paint whatever needed to be painted. I recognise that need to put things down. Seeing the other man do his painting in his own world was helpful to see. We didn't have to talk to each other or do anything at all in fact. He put his paint right across big sheets of paper with a heavy roller.
I have had to do some writing after seeing these pictures briefly.
Icon
My aunt Caroline's things came to me yesterday, via my brother driving up with a car load. So now I have a small icon. Unreadable script. I shall have to google image various possible scripts to find out which one it is, then type it into google translate using the appropriate keyboard.
When a person is alive their things are around them. The person turns up at family parties and smokes. When they are dead they things arrive in my house, item by item. I can sit on their chair, stir my soup with their wooden spoon and look cautiously at an icon with its patterns of dots over the metal.
Massive crash
The A34 was shut southbound today because a car transporter went through the crash barrier and right onto the grass by a rising slope over beyond the far side of the other carriageway. It met a van as it went I hear.
We missed this by 15/20 minutes. Do I drive more slowly because of this? Keep my distance more? Pump up my tyres more often?
The people I was due to see this morning had been hoping I was ok. So these drives day after day cause anxiety to others. I can't do anything differently apart from moving house to Kidlington for the next 2 1/2 years. That might be healthier.
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
I broke the A34 rule
It is against our rules to hoot, but I did just that at a fast driver who rushed up on the slow lane and dived in front of me in a section of road which is not meant to be fast. H and I were chatting to each other using our German phrases, so I had no idea where my sudden rage came from.
Earlier I'd noticed a lorry in my blind spot, just in time before I put us both under its wheels. Maybe surviving that one meant I was in no mood to be cut up by somebody in a mere car. It's the junction where I get onto the A34 north of Oxford. I have had numerous near misses there, in the rain, in the dark, in the light. Always lorries.
I peer carefully in my mirror each time I join the road, get up to a fast speed, look through the window as well, then that's the moment of truth -- huh - wheels, many many wheels, so very close.
A couple of days ago another Oxford driver did something exceptional at the lights. Moved from the slow lane into the fast lane then in right in front of the car in the slow lane. Then, seeing as the lights still hadn't turned to green, just drove through the red light round the corner to the left. Nothing surprises us any more. No one hooted or flashed their lights. Total calm.
Earlier I'd noticed a lorry in my blind spot, just in time before I put us both under its wheels. Maybe surviving that one meant I was in no mood to be cut up by somebody in a mere car. It's the junction where I get onto the A34 north of Oxford. I have had numerous near misses there, in the rain, in the dark, in the light. Always lorries.
I peer carefully in my mirror each time I join the road, get up to a fast speed, look through the window as well, then that's the moment of truth -- huh - wheels, many many wheels, so very close.
A couple of days ago another Oxford driver did something exceptional at the lights. Moved from the slow lane into the fast lane then in right in front of the car in the slow lane. Then, seeing as the lights still hadn't turned to green, just drove through the red light round the corner to the left. Nothing surprises us any more. No one hooted or flashed their lights. Total calm.
Saturday, 18 October 2014
Fiona Sampson - More late maths - A34
Tonight I was read to by:
Jennifer McGowan
Paul Surman
Fiona Sampson - Roehampton Poetry Centre - Poem Magazine
Pat Winslow
Jane Spiro
at the Albion Beatnik
Jane had written something specially for all of us, which was moving and just what I needed. As the evening went along I got all sorts of ideas for what I might want to write about. That must be high praise for a reading.
The one problem with a reading is that I can't see the words, or how they are laid out on the page. I am so used to seeing and reading them that it is a big jump to simply have to do without. They just flow past and are gone. There is no custom of posting a playlist afterwards, as it were, of what a poet had read out on the night.
Maths
When I got back H needed me for an hour of subtraction and long division. He still thinks I am a bad teacher, but I say that you learn anyway, because of and also in spite of your teacher. It's just a tricky business. A real teacher will be grumpy and tired, particularly coming up to midnight, and may well lie back in a chair and shut her eyes and say 'Yes, that's right' without looking.
A34
The A34 is the whole of life in microcosm. We see pheasant in a field, a motor boat, a huge span of steel girder, many mobile homes going southwards, trucks with tied on loads which I now overtake as carefully and quickly as I can. The ambulances flow through blocked traffic like butter, we all shift over like a well oiled machine, then shift back into position.
If the traffic is terrible I go to the pub beside the school for an hour from 9.15am. I always take work to do, so I can sit there in peace with a coffee. It is the Royal Sun. Very welcoming.
Jennifer McGowan
Paul Surman
Fiona Sampson - Roehampton Poetry Centre - Poem Magazine
Pat Winslow
Jane Spiro
at the Albion Beatnik
Jane had written something specially for all of us, which was moving and just what I needed. As the evening went along I got all sorts of ideas for what I might want to write about. That must be high praise for a reading.
The one problem with a reading is that I can't see the words, or how they are laid out on the page. I am so used to seeing and reading them that it is a big jump to simply have to do without. They just flow past and are gone. There is no custom of posting a playlist afterwards, as it were, of what a poet had read out on the night.
Maths
When I got back H needed me for an hour of subtraction and long division. He still thinks I am a bad teacher, but I say that you learn anyway, because of and also in spite of your teacher. It's just a tricky business. A real teacher will be grumpy and tired, particularly coming up to midnight, and may well lie back in a chair and shut her eyes and say 'Yes, that's right' without looking.
A34
The A34 is the whole of life in microcosm. We see pheasant in a field, a motor boat, a huge span of steel girder, many mobile homes going southwards, trucks with tied on loads which I now overtake as carefully and quickly as I can. The ambulances flow through blocked traffic like butter, we all shift over like a well oiled machine, then shift back into position.
If the traffic is terrible I go to the pub beside the school for an hour from 9.15am. I always take work to do, so I can sit there in peace with a coffee. It is the Royal Sun. Very welcoming.
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