10. في مكتبنا - سارة هاو

وعندما ان ارى صديقتي في مكتبنا اقول:

اهلا يا حبيبي!

وثم تقول:

اهلا يا حبيبي!

...

التكلم عن الشعر, القراءة عن الشعر

...


  راى / يرى / الرؤية


قال / يقول / القول

It all started with a Facebook chat in the middle of winter

Where would we be without rhyme
Nonsense needs some sparkle sometime
It lightens the soul
And we all need a goal
To focus on while becoming sublime

Some of us think in limericks, some can't fall asleep for frustrating end rhymes, some of us go away from the thread for a week and come back to find a party underway.

Hall Writers' Forum

andi dars attakallam al arabiyya, fi maktabi ma'a sadiqati, kull yaum aljama'a aw assabt, mumtaz! ana sa'ida!

My work colleagues and I have taken weeks to remember eachother's names and to speak clearly enough to each other. All those misunderstandings and apologies have paid off, because I can now chat to her in Arabic.

She doesn't mind being asked her name and how she is again and again.

A bit later she told me that she had heard the language students on the pavement below copying us, but with their own names. So they will be ready for chatting up any Arabic speakers who come their way! We have made a lot of people very happy just by larking around at work.

My other triumph was wandering off for fresh air....to our sister shop round the corner. I asked for their arabic section and was shown something very unusual from behind the counter, an album of photographs of a manuscript in Arabic script, labelled in French as a work on astrology. Since he didn't have a contact I suggested a couple of names at the Oriental Institute. I hope they don't get annoyed by random queries from bookshops. I was going to suggest the Weston Library or the London Library as other starting points.

So there is now a conversation class at work, pitched at exactly our level of forgetting and repetition:)

My poetry whatsit has woken up

11pm

It's hell trying to get to bed in poetry land
We are playing with words and memories
Party time with comments and likings

Being split up

I have just remembered how my various managers used to split me up from people I worked with because we used to chat and enjoy our lunch breaks and work times. McDonald's did this to me and Scottish Widows' too. They couldn't deal with people chatting intelligently about anything and laughing about a crossword puzzle we were communally solving in my drawer. I'd totally forgotten that too. Fun times.

It was probably because it disturbed the others and interfered with the work flow, but at age 19/23 that didn't cross our minds.

Does this still happen?

TV

Well, yesterday was Goodies night. It brought back so many feelings of recognition of the 70's attitudes. H and I were rivetted. I managed to tape some of it for T, even though it will be on iPlayer or similar.

Tonight T has voted for back to back episodes of House and H has chosen Father Ted. RE I guess, but only just.

Eating meat has been closer to RE. We got to thinking that really we should pray for each animal before eating it as its personality is well and truly separated from its body by the time we are eating it.

Wish List

Yes, this is greedy and to the point, but people ask me what I want and I go so blank and embarrassed that it helps no-one.

Playing cards

Books by:
Sharon Olds

Books about:
Michelle Obama
Mindfulness
American pioneers
Development of the Earth
Evolution of the animals

Fake fur bed spread!
Glass containers with glass lids for peanuts/sweets/nibbles at the table
New garage
Blogs to read
Biographies of my grandparents and other relatives, make it up if necessary...
Books of photos of America
Move our eucalyptus trees to the middle of our garden and turn back time so I didn't get them pruned and so they were able to grow freely to their full height

Crackling

I have a log on the fire plus some smokeless fuel. It is crackling very softly, showing it is not out, even though there are no actual flames.

We had some surprising train crashes earlier on the new train track. I altered the track too so it is a little shorter and the connections are smoother. Even so the track goes over the edge of the carpet with satisfying results!

I'm typing up last month's home ed review, but keep on giving myself time out to look at new blogs. Guess how long my time outs last! Long enough to find a stunning quilt here.

Little notebooks

I have a new passion, making tiny notebooks for us to use for noughts and crosses or doodling.

I take an A4 sheet of plain paper, halve it, then fold the 2 pieces in half. Those are the pages.

Then I find a beautiful advertisement or photo from the heap of mail and magazines we get. A half A4 piece wraps round the little pages.

3 staples finish each one off.

Read this out loud to get the rhythm

'And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
"O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a sieve.'

from The Jumblies
by Edward Lear

A new noise

The visiting cat jumped up and walked around on top of T's open lap top on the kitchen table. I was stuck on my chair with my lap top on my knee so I made a 'eeeeh' sound. It was just like a sheep.

Then the cat walked very close to T's mug of hot chocolate, so I made another spontaneous 'meeeh' sound, only without the 'm'. I was so shocked and yet couldn't do anything apart from bleat!!

Both boys spent such a long time copying my wonderful noises. My stomach started to hurt I was laughing so much. The cat was quite happy and totally ignored all of us.

Growltiger and The Rum Tum Tigger

"Growltiger had no eye or ear for aught but Griddlebone,
And the Lady seemed enraptured by his manly baritone,
Disposed to relaxation, and awaiting no surprise -
But the moonlight shone reflected from a hundred bright blue eyes.

And closer still and closer the sampans circled round,
And yet from all the enemy there was not heard a sound.
The lovers sang their last duet, in danger of their lives -
For the foe was armed with toasting forks and cruel carving knives."

"He's always on the wrong side of every door,
And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about.
He likes to lie in the bureau drawer,
But he makes such a fuss if he can't get out."

from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
by T S Eliot

BB pellets

We had some spare bb pellets which were not perfectly clean. They can mess up a bb gun if they are in any way dusty.

I poured them into a dish to have on our table as something to play with. Idle strewing.

The problem is that I have a tendency to try to eat anything which resembles food. I can feel myself wanting to reach out and see if they are actually white chocolate coated nibbles. My higher brain knows they aren't, but my pre-stone age brain just says 'fooooood'.

A long time ago I instinctively licked some spilt washing up liquid off my hand because it had an apple smell which overrode any sensible thoughts!

My special thing

Whenever I go to our church a few steps away I try to stay for coffee at the end. Whatever my thoughts about religion and all that, I have no issues with chat and coffee.

No matter whether I get my drink first or towards the end, I'm always the last person to bring their mug to the sink and wind up swooshing it through the suds myself. How does that happen? Probably because I love talking with people and having a good time!

So I recommend a chatty church to anyone, just sing along and ignore what you don't get along with. I suspect life is too short to try to find the right religion.

Cheating at cards....

'He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder is looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or when the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair-
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!'

Macavity: The Mystery Cat
by T S Eliot

We have big heads

S has gone halfway round the world for *one* meeting.

T won first prize for photography at the Village Show and saw it get a lovely high value after deciding to donate it for the charity auction at the end.

H was surrounded by younger boys quietly watching him play a computer game in the cafe area of the show.

I got first prize for my 2lb loaf!!!! How pleased am I?

Fun

My brother J is here with us. We went out to the cafe and did a short stop motion film of a doughnut being eaten away.

Later they went out for a pizza and came back to some new, red and still warm play dough. We made a couple of films on the table. A red thing with sharp teeth being alive. Then a flower growing and turning into a man.

Advent Calendar 24 - Confused by Mah-Jong

We have worked out a very simple version of Mah-Jong, and even that is a bit too complex for our Christmas brains. The pieces make a lovely clacking sound as we stir them round on the table.

Taking photos

We went off to take photos today. I'll add some when I can. It was such a good feeling to be asked to get into the car and just go to somewhere photogenic.

The children have discovered the joys of going to playgrounds to lark around and take pictures of each other. We swap cameras/mobiles and snap away. I hold onto the kit when they need both hands for climbing.

It means being outside so I get some nature observation time too, ie touching sticky leaf buds on low tree branches and peering at nettle flowers. I had no idea they flowered until so late in the year.

It made a good contrast to my filthy temper of yesterday :)

LAN party

We loaded up the car with 2 computers, plus all the extras. There was a one hour set up period, then the lights were altered to be more party-ish and Guitar Hero was turned on.

It was such a good experience, calm, fun, chilled, relaxed, silly. There were some parents there too, mainly fathers, for the whole evening. The age range was 8? up to 20ish?, plus parents. There were some girls there too. They played with each other more, laughing and joking, lovely to see, that little bit different from how the boys interact, but all in the same room together, getting what they wanted out of it.

There was a pizza and garlic bread supper at half way, but people took their own sweets if they wanted, so it wasn't regimented at all. I drove off to get some crisps my children wanted half way through.

Someone I knew from years ago was there too and for the last 2 hours I found a corner to sit in and read my book with a cup of coffee beside me!

People took their systems apart around 11pm, all very calm. We were busy at home afterwards setting up the systems again. Amazing...no cables were lost, nothing was damaged, no drink spilt on anything. I'm still on a bit of a high after all that.