Wedding flowers

These are so much more beautiful in real life, I keep on moving the vase to different places. There are blues, pinks and white from bluebells, forget me not, aquilegia, campion and something lovely I found in my mother in law's garden today.

I put another bouquet down by our drive way with queen anne's lace, honesty and campion.

What a day! Just lovely to have a fun day with slightly too much Pimms....We all wound up on Google trying to find out 'what Harry said to William'. No one had managed to lip read it by then.

Knock me down with a feather!

H
Car journey
Radio 4
Kathleen Ferrier
How do you know about her?
I read a lot online
You just read Twitter

Friday Fiction - Steel

I am a steel joist way up high in a building in New York. Now I am hidden, but I was snapped as I swung through the air many years ago. That photograph is part of the history of my country now.

When the storms howl past in the winters I hear the creaking and groaning in the upper stories of this building. I shift slightly and flex.

In the hot summers I heat up and expand with the others, just a bit, just enough to acknowledge nature and the seasons.

I cannot see into my future. When will I relax into a molten furnace again and become my next selves? I must wait and just be myself until change carries me elsewhere.

More tears, so moving

I read out some of the description of the service to T, but couldn't continue, just passed my laptop over for him to read the rest.

And here too, the groups of tall candles remind me of the orthodox way of putting candles in trays of sand, all at slightly different angles to each other.

Iran

Iran has been busy today. I have had 8 hits all at once from there. The US is having a day off from internet sweeping, not a single hit today, most unusal for them!

A while back Taiwan hit me 23 times in one day...

1 Min - Trash/Treasure

It's odd that 99% of the items in my house I am still giving space to are things I deep down just want to get rid of. I love the way the cat from next door has no possessions at all, just her body, mind and soul, all wrapped up in one. When did we humans start to drown in stuff?

1 Min - Judge

I am putting a lot of links about Bahrain, Libya and other political issues on Facebook at the moment. I am making a judgement that the people who dislike this will 'hide' me and one or two will read the links.

So that's why!

The reason why I never got into 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' was because T started coming home much  more often on the earliest train. I would drive down to the station to pick him up and he'd be there already. That had been my reading slot in the day.

So when term begins again I'll simply aim to be there 15 mins earlier than before so I get my reading time back.

1 Min - Fail

When I took my driving test I knew that if I failed it I wouldn't be able to afford more lessons. I was so very pleased when I passed!

Time

I have a useful phrase: "It might take a few days, weeks, months or years."

It is my antidote to the comments about how a new skill can be grafted onto a child over a few well-planned days. Ha! is what I say. Other people's timing is nearly never the same as mine.

The hard part for me is getting to the point where I have forgotten that I am supposed to ensure skill x,y or z is part of the child's way of life.

From then on life is easy until the lovely time when they suggest the idea themselves and I think "Wow!" and give myself a virtual gold mothering medal.

Ring

The ringing of church bells after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I used to hope and hope it wouldn't wake up the children just when I needed to put the stockings in their rooms.....tip toe, creak, tip toe, creak!!

Fast4Libya

Yay! I did it, just about to nibble a date. First time for me. I had the times written in biro on my hand.

Relief

I felt gradual relief as news came through bit by bit that Iman Al Obeidi was still alive in Libya.

Summit

I don't feel the need to get to the summit of a hill. I prefer to get to a sheltered, comfortable spot where I can feel the breeze, the hot sun and read my book in peace!

1 Min - Animal

When I look at animals or birds I try to appreciate their seeming ability to enjoy the sunshine and to do the work they need to do. A blackbird and I looked at each other this morning. She had a worm in her mouth, but she took a moment to stand still and look back at me also standing still.

Part 2

Actually the first thing I thought of when I saw the word animal was that logo in a special font which is on the back of 4 x 4 cars and clothing. I have absolutely no idea of what it connects to and it is refreshing to be utterly disconnected from something's meaning. A bit like looking at Arabic, I see it, but I get none of it!

1 Min - Wierd

I always misread that word as 'wired', perhaps because we used to have a lot of wires and cables in this house.

Long hot summer

Does anyone else have that feeling that it's going to be a long, hot, uncomfortable summer of freedom fighting and campaigning?

If so, how to pace oneself? How to focus on specific issues and let the rest go so I can stay attentive to my own household? I spend a lot of time online and need to pull away a bit.

Being in a free country with a 'vote them in, then vote them out again' arrangement means having a greater range of action without risking life and limb or the safety of family. Having that option also brings with it an obligation to consider using that freedom for others who can't at the moment.

Someone wrote how they feel that their action is so tiny, like one pebble when a wall is needed, yet as Bishop Tutu once said in Durham to the whole market place from the town balcony, 'Everything you do matters', not sure of the exact wording, but it's direct and encouraging!

I had a relative who was taken away in the middle of the night and held for a year or two back in WW2. She certainly enjoyed her life afterwards, water skiing and the South of France, but I'm not up to reading about her camp in Germany yet. Even reading the titles on the spines of the books in the Imperial War Museum bookshop made me wary of even touching them and I'm a lot older now than she was during her incarceration.

Friday Fiction - Battery

We used to live to the north east of a shed of battery chickens. The smell was bad! But the wind blew in from the south west.

One day I moved into fiction land and went into the building, dressed in black, reduced in size to a 2 inch wiggly rat like guerilla. Inside I found a rather lovely library and oasis of peace. Hidden from the world and well disguised by the machine pumping out foul smells to deter visitors. It was a work place for the British Secret Service, less like Bond and more like my ideal home!

And what did I do with my new-found knowledge....absolutely nothing. I crept away, leaving them to their dastardly deeds. Back to the land of real and onwards to buy a house several miles away, have my children and land up on my own blog.

And that is the end of my mini story.

I Min - Crash

All I remember is snapshots from one second apart and the happy feeling of knowing the car was not going down the slope towards the motorway. We stopped on the grass in the middle of the roundabout.

Symbol

How to create an image which can be recognised anywhere: a supporter of Ai Wei Wei created this woodcut design based on the porcelain sunflower seeds shown at the Tate Modern.

1 Min - Ask

I think of those phone calls from doctors and others, asking, begging for help. Listening to the news at night, learning what those voices sound like.

Meal in a box

Genius! This blogger has a photo of how she puts the ingredients for each meal in a separate box in her fridge. If it works for her it could work for anyone. Visual boxes probably work a lot better than written lists.

Enough posts for one day??

1 Min - Move

Move house, move my furniture, move like in 5R or CI, move mountains!!

Labyrinth

Here is an online labyrinth. I haven't tried it yet, but I put it here for others to consider.

You can light virtual candles too, they last for 48 hours.

1 Min - Harder/Easier

I think this is about fighting something or accepting how it is and doing something about it minus the 'it shouldn't be like this' thoughts. Zen-ish approach.

1 Min - Problem

Eeek...I solved a big problem by altering my desk heaps. Now my top priority heap concerns money. That's it!

Fishing

'"He is two feet longer than the skiff," the old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.'

from 'The Old Man and the Sea'
by Ernest Hemingway

Nettle soup time

Here is a recipe for potato, onion and nettle soup. I dare myself to make it. Add a comment if you have the daringness to make this too.