'Tis the season to go mad and spray everything gold. I made so much marzipan for other people that I couldn't face another batch so covered the house cake with apricot jam and nuts which then looked dull so got gold spray for the edges but once spraying I couldn't stop and I fear the result i rather like Miss Faversham's wedding breakfast - it looks as if it started to decay some time ago and is reaching the luminous stage.Ah well!So many things to do to prepare. I can't imagine how I spend my time when it in't Christmas, also, more importantly for us witches, the Solstice. C, S and I went to walk the Solstice spiral at the FF last eve. We picked Angel cards after. Miraculously Sanders got 'Support' which is brilliant. We explained he has the angel with him for the year and he is to think on the meaning of support - to offer it to others as well as hoping for it for himself. Amazingly, because it sounds so prissy and moralistic put like that, he seemed to take it seriously. Chloe got 'Joy' which I feel she is due and might not recognise if it bit her! I got 'Purpose' which threw me. I've drifted into the comfortable belief that a sense of purpose is for the young and it's far too late in my life for me to worry my head over.I might not re-appear here for a while so - have a very happy, warm and cosy Christmas everyone and may 2012 bring you only good things.

Oops! I mean Miss Havisham of course. Don't like Dickens much so it's a long time since I read about the sad old wrinkly.

How to love life.

In between bouts of snow-scraping, marzipan making, present ordering (as much as possible I have bought mail order or internet this year) and general faffing about Christmas, I've been reading 'How Proust Can Change Your Life.' by Alain de Botton. This was given to my ex who read Proust in the original years ago. I tried to read Proust in translation years ago - but hadn't the patience, and now I see that my lack of patience is a character flaw I would feel better without. What Proust teaches me (or would if I could sit still long enough to be taught) is how to savour each moment so my greyest, dullest and most depressing day can be transcended and enlightened by a small thing like the dipping of a madeleine into Lime Flower tea. I shall put some quotations here eventually, but not today because I'm feeling too - impatient. Just this photo of one of Proust's sentences, the longest logged, in the fifth volume of 'In Search of Lost Times' which would 'if arranged along a single line in standard-sized text, run on for a little short of four metres and stretch round the base of a wine bottle seventeen times.' I suppose Button to have verified this by experiment. Certainly if I were to try to read a sentence this long I would need to have a wine bottle handy to wrap myself around.

It's a brilliant book - Botton's. I don't know about Proust's, but if I'm very bored, or possibly shipwrecked, I suppose I might give it a go.

Neighbourly times.

It's been an exciting week weatherise. Snow and ice. Wind - ferocious, with flickering lights, so I walked around the house with a maglight in my pocket and stationed candles everywhere just in case. Pity I couldn't find the matches. If that wasn't drama enough in this backwater, my wheelie bin blew away after the pick-up truck had been. I wandered around the neighbourhood searching wistfully for it until an elderly lady spotted me and knocked on her window to call me over. A Good Samaritan had taken HER bin in unbeknownst to her; she had seen mine lying alone in the road, thought it was hers and taken it home with her. Luckily Chloe had put the house number on the bin when it belonged to her - they cost £30 to replace. None of this was a dramatic as the night a friend spent up in the hills when a tree fell within 10' of her house. The drive up to it is already blocked to all but tractors. I'm glad I live in suburbia! There's hardly a tree big enough to cause damage to a Wendy House round here.

After the wind we had one day of absolute calm, roads dry and ice-free and snow totally disappeared, but we woke yesterday to white car shaped mounds in front of the houses again and urgently cheeping birds. I've already spent £20 on them this year. Don't they know times are hard for all us creatures.

I didn't have to go out, had planned a day of cooking for the freezer against the arrival of the Wreckers so it was a surprise to see my car and pathway cleared by mid morning. I went round to thank my next-door neighbour, a young electrician with the RAF, who is deeply depressed because his wife, also RAF, is in the Falklands until February. He had been posted to Italy at the same time, poised to attack Libya, but the death of Gaddafi sent them all home again and he is desolate to be wifeless. Luckily he is as unsociable as me and doesn't want to be visiting, but still I feel worried about him. He says they both hate children - so no point in inviting him around over Christmas. He's volunteered for guard duty.

There's nothing like a bit of adversity for getting to know ones neighbours, a point I wish our PM would ponder.

I dragged myself out into the weather on Wednesday to attend a lecture on stained glass, finding, to my dismay, that the Brits don't have a good reputation for this craft and the good stuff, from the 13th century onward, is all on the other side of the channel. I remember seeing a breathtaking exhibition of Chagall's stained glass on the Belgian border withFrance a lot of years ago. The lecturer was sticking to the Christmas story so there wasn't much od Chagall, whose subjects were more often Old Testament of course. I'd very much like to do a stained glass trail round France, but it seems unlikely.

I made the mistake of buying a real tree, raised in captivity so it will hopefully survive coming indoors for a while, I just don't feel I can bring it in yet for fear it gets soft....oh the responsibility!

Poor photography - not sure if it's me or my camera - but I'm pleased with the reality.

Yesterday was an unusual Saturday for me - I went to a felt flower-making workshop. In 6 hours we made 20 felt flowers of no known species to be glued around fairy lights. The six hours weren't quite enough so I have to go back Monday to glue mine on but I'm quite happy with the results of my labours. Everybody produced something different - one idea, one teacher, five idiosyncratic outcomes. Remarkable. To be surrounded by all the colour and creativity was heady excitement enough, but it was very satisfying to feel that I had really got something to take home and enjoy, that I hadn't just made a complete mess of it as I feared I might. Unlike the last felt workshop that I did some years back this was much more gentle and manageable for a dodgy back and very dodgy lungs. Still it was quite intensive and I left with renewed respect for the mother-daughter team who make all the glorious felt hats, scarves, bags, brooches, ear-rings, wall-hangings, etc. etc. on sale. They start always from scratch - once they even died their own wool but now they have less time they buy in ready dyed hanks in colours of their own choosing. No felting machines here, no using industrial felt for bases, the process is always the same: lay out the strands of wool on bubble wrap in the chosen shape, wet, roll, insert plastic webbing (the stuff that is used by scaffolding firms to collect debris) roll some more, reverse, roll some more, soap, fidget it about with the hands, begin the fulling process by shaping, washing, drying. When I did it last time we were working on big pieces and using those bamboo window blinds rather than meshing. I couldn't manage that nowadays! The weather is wild and can be everything within the space of and hour, sun wind, rain, sleet, warm, chill. It was very pretty when I first arrived at Logie Steading - the photos don't do it justice.

Snow! The gloriously dry, warm, sunny weather disappeared in a gust of wind yesterday bringing in sleet and dark grey skies. It had to happen. I like proper seasons. At least I try to!

Stir-up Sunday (or should it have been Saturday for the Wee Free observers of the Sabbath?) just passed and dutifully I made the four big fruit cakes expected by the various branches of the family. I forgot to take the cake's photos before I doused them in brandy and swaddled them in greaseproof and tinfoil to sit in the garage (coolest place and carless) until required. It isn't a chore once I get going - with care I can use the same lining for all four cakes - but I'm still wondering when I can pass the baton to a daughter. Sophie is the most likely candidate. She likes cooking. Chloe doesn't. Sophie is a cook after my grandmother's heart, rarely following any recipes but going by instinct and throwing in the ingredients she's seen a television cook using without too much worry over quantities. It seems to work. She makes the best apple crumble I've eaten, much better than my own.

This weekend it the turn of the puds and copious steam throughout the house. There will be more of us together to eat the main one this year so I'm planning to make the usual recipe then add a supplement, Mrs.Beaton's Figgy Pudding which doesn't have to be made before Christmas eve. There will have to be a trifle too, for Iain. There will be too much. I always go over the top and do too much. I should have been a Victorian cook. Maybe I was.

A friend did one of those Arvon writing course and came away determined to write her autobiography, mainly for her own benefit and as a sort of therapy. I was just embarking on a rehash of mine having lost one version to the last computer crash. We decided to have a weekly meeting to goad each other on. I hardly need goading because I can write so much at a sitting - verbal diarrhoea really - but the energy has gone out of mine because I've done it before so I thought it might help. What it did, unfortunately, was to halt me in my tracks. Her life has been so much more interesting than mine, besides which she has an aunt, alive at 101, who has been able to give her the most eloquent cameos of the life of their family before during and after the wars, including the birth of my friend's father. She even remembers what the weather was like! I have nothing like this. To make matters worse I've been reading Isabel Allende, 'Paula' which is often autobiographical. Allende's writing is so rich and saturated with her colourful Chilean upbringing that I'd almost decided I'm too bored by my own
unadventurous childhood in a safe English village to continue. Then today I read in the Inde that Diane Keaton's mother said 'Every living person should be forced to write an autobiography.... too go back..... ' so I am going to press on and try not to fall asleep. Another piece of good advice found in an Arvon publication is from Alan Bennett - don't start at the beginning start with a time that interests you and let the rest emerge around that. Words to that effect.

Apart from these activities I am now entering the panic-about-Christmas-presents phase when I overspend hopelessly because I'm rubbish at spotting the perfect gift for people.....

Well the new format hasn't gone away so I may as well get used to it. I could look out for the options as suggested by Chillside but for today I'm not bothering because I have enough complications with a home hub that is playing up. I can only take so much jiggling about with technology at any one time! Not much to say at present anyway! Just dropped in to say this... and to complain about the number of Christmas cakes still to be baked. I'll be OK once I get going.

Well either the blogspot has gone mad or I have. It's all changed and I'm not reassured at all. Nothing much happening in my world anyway but I had a Thought or two to share with the outer world. All have vanished in the confusion. The weather is so good that that is confusing too. This time last year we were already ankle deep in snow.

Grandson is home with a gastric episode. We hope it isn't catching as it hasn't been the 24hr variety, more 75hrs. I think I'm going to stop pretending I have anything worth saying and see if this works.

The shop has been selling out of oat bran since Kate Middleton got thin for her wedding by following the Dukan diet. What I didn't know, but do now a friend has informed me, is that essences of all the foods banned on the regime are available so one need never yearn in vain for cheese, or chocolate, or fruit because the flavour is available. To those like me who self medicate with food, and flavour is what it's all about, it now makes perfect sense. Nothing can quite convince me that I wouldn't miss a nice bowl of sloppy polenta of a chilly evening but I suppose there has to be some self sacrifice involved.

I shan't be doing the diet, too expensive and I really cow
Don't cut out fruit -seems daft- but yoga, oat bran porridge with blueberries for breakfast, plus some costly slimming pills loaded with seaweed and pomegranate oil have finally begun to make a difference. Mainly it's the yoga I think, but I keep up the pills.

I don't look slimmer but I do feel better. The moment I started to feel less lumpish and sluggish I also found I didn't want to eat so much!

Really it's as well to sidestep the NHS or at least do what one can without them. I heard today of a chap who tried to top himself over the weekend. Luckily he botched the job and was admitted to hospital overnight but released on the morning with no follow-up suggested because a psychiatrist had had a quick word with him and declared him not to be suicidal!

I'm still finding my way around the new toy. Nice autumn weather here and some outings for me, the most notable being a trip to g'son's school for a day of talks put on by the Scottish Opera, a sort of show-and-tell about the staging of the Barber of Seville which was in Inverness last week. The highlight of this event was the 'cover' (opera term for understudy I learned) who came in to sing an aria from the BofS. A large girl with poor dress sense was what my friend and I muttered when we first saw her - but that was before she started to sing. Wow! It wasn't a large room and she nearly shot us all out of the windows. I love volume! She was also jolly, with the loudest laugh I have ever heard. Her encore piece was from Wagner - 'Wagner lite' she called it, not Valkyrie stuff, but still lightbulb-smashing stuff. Not a soprano luckily so not nerve shattering; mezzo soprano I suppose. I'm not a fan of opera, just went along because it was really good value with lunch included in the refectory where Sandy eats twice daily. The food was excellent, with lots of choice so his grandfather was pleased to know he's getting value for the school fees. We didn't see him because he was doing a seamanship course, sailing in cutters at Buckie.

Then on Friday the ex and his wife gave a party for the tenth anniversary of their arrival in Scotland and the beginning of his retirement. They rarely give parties which is just as well for me because I feel bit ill-at-ease - not sure of my role or position there. As it happens most people they know I know anyway and some were actually my friends before they were theirs. Still it felt weird and I've had a couple of nights-worth of nightmares with the past coming up to haunt.... Everyone says I do so well when in fact there is no choice. I'm very fond of my ex and for that, if for nothing else, I have to make it work, but there are also the children, grown but still our children and wanting to see us getting on. The demon mind with its cohorts of emotions just make everything more fraught than it should be.Yesterday a friend took me to seafood restaurant up the coast that I hadn't been to before. Very nice Cullen Skink - not too salty for once. Fireworks last night in the local park which I heard but didn't see. Daughter and g'son were shaking buckets collecting for next year's display. Today - well, I might just stay in my nightdress.

Winter.

Did I imagine it or did the PM’s advisors tell him that one way to improve the sum of British happiness would be to stop changing the clocks? The clock change has become the starting gun for winter in the collective mind so there will be a multitude of folk waking up this morning feeling more depressed than they need be. As a cog in that collective I would like to support their theory. It takes me months to get used to this change - it’s worse than the Spring forward.

The signs for the onset of winter are so much less poetic than they used to be (sign of the times?) The days shorten and the leaves turn wonderful colours as ever, but there is also the clock change and the ‘flu jab. The jab was Thursday, coffee and biscuits after, and conversation with people I’ve never met before but with whom I was sharing the annual ritual. Then there was a day of feeling a bit shivery. Now it’s all over and hopefully I am fully armed against whatever Mother Nature had in mind for reducing the population overload.

My reading has been a bit haphazard lately, couldn’t settle to anything. Then the autobiography of Kathleen Raine arrived, ordered so long ago I’d almost forgotten about it. She isn’t a favourite poet of mine but she played a major role in the life of Gavin Maxwell who I've always found to be a charismatic and intriguing character. I’ve read his side of their friendship and his biographer’s opinions but wanted to hear hers. I had to wait for that sad tale till very near the end of what is a charting of her inner life rather than a account of the outer mundane events that formed the backdrop to what was more important to her. Her writing style is that of poet of a past era and I’m an impatient reader who doesn’t appreciate too much embroidery so I’m afraid I skipped quite a lot. I might return when I’m in a more tranquil state; she does have some very interesting observations, and the people she was at Cambridge with, like Jacob Bronowski and Malcolm Lowry occasionally get a mention.

Her love for Gavin Maxwell and his inability to love her in return in the way she desperately wanted (not only, I think, because he was homosexual but because he was entangled by his own bipolar condition) was so sad it almost broke my heart. What she saw in him, or as she acknowledged in another context, all the qualities that she endowed him with (as women do) made him everything she wanted in a soul-mate, and though she tried to see the truth of him as a fascinating, gifted, and emotionally flawed human being, she failed to do that, so causing herself the deepest pain she had experienced in her life. Maybe I see too much of myself in her. I certain recognise the intense personal narrative that drowns out any signals from the worlds others are living in.

Ramblings.

All is well. A new iMac laptop is on it's way. Now all I have to do is fire it up. I'm so nervous! So long since i had to launch a new computer and i'm not very adept. This week I have deleted Sandy and I from Facebook somehow. Not that I use it, nor does he, but we like to know we have the option. All I did was voice my opinion on a government site then panic when it said I could link my entry to Facebook. It sounded alarming. I thought S would be credited with my soap-box stuff about planning application for a local development submitted by the Tesco company and, he wouldn't want that ruining his street cred. I pressed 'cancel' and now we are history.

It's extraordinary how topics, people, events collide in my life, in everyone's. We all have examples. I was reading the book 'by' Kim Noble (ghosted) who is a non-existant woman, given that name at birth, but her body was then later inhabited by 100 or so personalities as horrific abuse caused mulitiple fractures. The dominant personality Patricia, began painting to encourage their daughter ( a daughter she doesn't remember giving birth to and who, until the diagnosis, she imagined to be the child of a friend always being left for her to mind). Other personalities found they also enjoyed the opportunity to splash paint around, express themselves or just have fun, and now they have group exhibitions, all except one of them who wants her own exhibitions! It sounds crazy. Staggering to hear just what the brain is capable of. None of Patricia's personalities were aware of the existence of the others and though their lives seemed oddly disjointed they somehow made sense of them, with occasional spells in mental institutions . They did suffer and there were terrible sadnesses, like the woman who gave birth to the baby girl only to have her taken away by social services. Another personality fought to get her back but the birth mother who had lost a newborn couldn't accept the infant and still mourns her baby. There are also the funny sides. One woman has a driving licence, another loves water and always plunges into any she sees, which led to the driver finding herself sitting in her car fully clothed but soaking wet in front of a fountain after the water lover had had her bathe. Years ago I read 'Sybil' about a woman with multiple personalities . It was made into a film, which was gripping but turned out to be a scam cooked up by a therapist. That experience made me wary of 'All of
Me' but it does seem authentic. Nowadays the condition is called Dissociative identity Disorder. I'm tempted to be cross my brain can't come up with something more interesting so that bits of me at least could actually write something worth reading! More seriously, if we could access all our brains have in the way of functions how exciting that might be!

With all this in my head I found out that two siblings I knew as cheerful teenagers in Brussels have been diagnosed schizophrenic and, now
in their 40's are still living with their parents. Their cheerfully normal younger sister came into the shop yesterday, startling me, because she looked like a stranger, by saying 'Carol, it is you isn't it?'.

I am so sad - my iMac seems to have died, or at least to be in a critical condition. It won't boot up ( is that still the term?). Now I'm faced with a decision that isn't really much of a decision at all because the poor thing was already declared so out-dated as to be ready for the knackers last time I rang the help-line.

I'm going to have to replace it!

In the meantime, whilst I go busking, rob the rich to give to me, sell my body (any Burke and Hare teams out there willing to give me something on account, sort of pay now buy later scheme....) there will be no pics here. Sad.

I’ve been going through one of those uncomfortable between-times when I can’t find a book to suit my mood. I have several unreads waiting on my shelves, a Rose Tremain 'Colours' Amitav Ghosh ‘The Glass Palace,’ and ‘Topper takes a Trip’ by Thorne Smith, to name just a few. Raking disconsolately through the Red Cross shelves wasn’t helpful; what they had on offer was same-old same-old, although I do acknowledge the problem is more mine than theirs.

Eventually I grabbed a fat ex-library hardback copy of ‘Joyce and Ginnie’ a collection - selection - of the huge correspondence between Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham over Joyce’s lifetime (she dies some 12 years before her friend.) I knew I wouldn’t read it all and thought it might irritate me but it was worth a go. I have one or two fond memories of laughter shared with my ma-in-law (of all people) over recording by Grenfell, ‘George, don’t do that’ amongst them. Also the early St.Trinian’s films, watched on TV with my parents seemed funny in their day. I bought the collection recently and unfortunately my taste, tolerance, and the times have all changed so they were a bit of a disappointment. I greatly prefer the updated versions with Russell Brand, Rupert Everett and Colin Firth.

To my surprise I read about a third of the way through before skipping to the end and her death. From the tone of the letters, said to be very like her manner of speaking, and a few photos, Joyce didn’t have to act much to be the gauche ‘jolly hockey sticks’ gym mistress in St. T. She’s even got a sort of gym slip on in the cover photo. What I did admire is her gutsiness and positivity which, at a guess, were both natural to her but equally might have been a result of the discipline involved in being a Christian Scientist, or, even more probably, the ethos of the time.

My mother-in-law, a contemporary of JG, expressed disgust every time I tried to share my real feelings on any subject. I always used, as one was exhorted to do in counselling and workshops, the ‘I’ word so as to own my emotions. She told me this showed how irredeemably egotistical I was/am. It simply wasn’t done in their day to say ‘I think’ or ‘I feel’. ‘One’ had to be substituted at all times so as to distance oneself! I believe I pointed out to her, in a provoked moment, that every time she said ‘One’ she meant ‘I’ so it came to the same thing in the end.

There is something admirable in the determined bright-brittle cheerfulness of these between-the-wars people. The lost generation. It can be found in ‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley, in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford, and ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons, three of my favourite novels made long ago into BBC series and films which I bought recently on DVD to spend many hours glued to my couch watching when I should have been doing something more productive,

I learned an interesting fact: at the time their correspondence began there were five posts a day and a letter written early in the morning could reach the recipient by tea-time. So different now!

I also liked this ‘pome’ (yes, she was unfortunately fond of this verbal whimsy!) by JG and shall have it at my funeral. I might change the last two lines. All suggestions welcome.

If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I am gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must
Parting is hell.
But life goes on
So sing as well.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.... and Spring.

N and I watched a very beautiful film by a Korean director Ki-duk Kim, last Sunday, 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter..... And Spring' Long title, but it does contain the essence of the film which is the circle of life. Quite apart from the ravishing scenery which was a treat in itself, it coincided nicely with a resurgence of interest in Buddhism chez moi. N always asks me what sort of film I'd like to watch and I always say 'not gloomy, and not one of those Art House films in which nothing happens,' but this time he ignored me because he had decided the evening before what we were going to watch - and I had to say how psychic he had been! I may not have known that's what I wanted, but it was!!

A monk and his disciple, a very young child, live in a tiny monastery on a platform built in the middle of a lake, surrounded by steep tree-covered banks that frame and protect it. The child grows to manhood under the watchful eyes of the monk, learning life lessons as he passes through the stage of growing. His first harsh lesson is brought to him through his own childish play with creatures he catches as he explores the forests alone. The innocent play turns to cruelty when he ties stones to a fish, a frog and a snake. The monk punishes him for this cruelty by tying a heavy rock to his own middle, telling him that if the creatures have come to harm because of his thoughtless actions he will wear the stone in his heart for the rest of his days. Two of them have died and though the child weeps with regret he will never be free of the anguish he has caused.

In his adolescence a sick young woman is brought by her mother to be healed by the monk. She also brings with her the greatest lesson of the young man’s life for he falls in love. The monk tells him that though love is good and their sexual play has helped to cure the girl, if he can’t let her go his desire will lead to killing. He can’t let her go, he leaves the monastery instead, and it and it does lead to a killing.

The student returns to the island, perhaps to seek forgiveness, or sanctuary or perhaps to find peace, but anyway to tell the monk he was right - the Buddha was right! The monk reminds him of the sutras which he sets the student to carve out on the wooden decking before he is arrested by the police. After they have taken him away the old monk commits suicide. His work is done.

Inevitably the student returns to the island monastery, finds his old clothes waiting for him and a book of martial art exercises which he works on to perfect. He remains alone as the seasons turn until the day when a baby is left with him - the baby who will become his charge to teach in the ways of wisdom. There are some strange scenes toward the end that I would like to have explained. They are probably clearer to those who know the mythology of his country.

This director has caused controversy by representing women in a way that looks to be derogatory and mysoginistic; also by the explicit cruelty to animals shown in some of his films. He doesn’t get past the western censors without cuts. None of that is apparent in ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn...’ which would indicate sympathy with the Buddhist Way an essentially harmless path that wishes all sentient beings to be happy. It’s difficult to assess how much of what he does is deliberately to shock or if it’s a cultural difference.

The Aviator.

Talking of rabbits, I wish I knew the history of this aviator chappie. I've had him for years since being the only one to bid for him at the local auction (Gillian's 'Gladys' made me think of him). He is made in some sort of plastic, not quite resin, lighter, and he's hollow although his very sympatique expression shows he has a soul IMO. The detail is quite remarkable - his face is so furry you can almost feel it and his knitted scarf so very woolly. I feel he was more than a toy. His feet show signs of being stuck to a surface with cement (not concrete).

I got my moonhare. I had wanted one since I saw an earlier version at an exhibtion by the very creative felting ladies. I didn't expect it to be in a circle - so much more exciting! It was a birthday present from my eldest daughter.

Celebrations and sadness.

Congratulations to my favourite newspaper, the Independent, on it's 25th birthday. I hope it has many more.

Farewell to Steve Jobs. He did what most men wouldn't think to do and put design on a level with technology. Even the earliest Apples were so much less cumbersome and ugly than Microsoft efforts. I can't afford a new Apple at the moment but I have no intention of lowering my standards and buying an inferior brand. Presumably communication in the hereafter works without even WIFI but if it doesn't I'm sure he will fix that for them.

Verdict on black garlic.... Not yet...

The jury is still out. The taste (IMO) is a subtle mix of molasses, liquorice and garlic, and so far I've only tried it in a sauce poured over veggies. The sauce was from the Internet but I didn't follow quantities and the balsamic vinegar with wasabi was a bit over-powerful so the garlic got lost.

Even so - I tried one on it's own and I'm not sure I like the taste, or the smell. Shame. I was looking forward to a new addition to my quick-meal cuisine.

I shall persevere.

I find the time goes more quickly between customers in the shop if I browse recipes. More often than not this makes me extremely hungry so I dash home and open a tin of mackerel, which is a bit of a waste of good hunger but there you are. Sometimes something new to me and intriguing pops up; this week it was black garlic. It is fermented garlic and promises to be both delicious and very nutritious having far more anti-oxidants than the fresh stuff. I've ordered some so shall report back.

Probably everyone else in the world has already eaten it but - new to me remember!

Culinary delights are showering on me this week. J sent me some orta. I've been looking for this ants-egg shaped pasta for about thirty years since eating it in Greece with Youvetsi, a rich lamb stew. If I lived further south I would have found it by now but it hasn't made it to the Highlands. It cooks fast and is soft - I do love soft food these days. I remind myself of Heidi's grandmother, for whom the thoughtful child pocketed all those nice soft white rolls....

Travelling in the mind.

It has been a strange week, the heat-wave tempered by overcast skies and high humidity which I, for one, find uncomfortable. It was great to be able to turn off the heating again, walk about in bare feet and wear summer clothes but the house was gloomy morning and evening so I needed more lights on (I’d hate to deny the energy companies their bonuses) and thoughts of Seasonal Affective Disorder were sending customers into the shop for ammunition against The Dark.

Also making me wonder about getting daylight bulbs for reading lamps. I hate these dim low-energy things.

My diverse reading over the past two weeks has sometimes failed to lighten my spirits. It’s all very well reading quality literature but mostly all I need is escapism that’s just a bit thought provoking, nothing too heavy or meaningful.

Elizabeth Haynes’ first novel ‘Into the Darkest Corner’ was gripping, intelligent, insightful, worrying. That thing about feeling mad, and possibly behaving madly, when you don’t expect people to believe you or don’t want to believe yourself. The protagonist suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and is paranoid, maybe for a good reason - maybe not. It’s nicely paced without the method of pacing becoming too overt ( one gripe I have with Phil Rickman is that his habit of creating cliff-hangers then sashaying off into another thread or back-story is beginning to irritate. It was a OK formula to begin with... need remodelling!)

Tanglewreck, a children’s story by Jeanette Winterson, the author of ‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’ is really good. A story line crafted out of flights from quantum physics and modern molecular scientific observations like the String Theory. The weirdness of Time - does it exist or have we created it? Can it really become a commodity? Adults never seem to have enough of it these days. There is a cat called Dinger who exists in a quantum state in which he is both alive and dead. You can't tell which he'll be until you open his box. Sound familiar? Well it may not be quite so familiar to a child reader and anything that introduces children to Schroedinger and a mind-fuddling paradox like that one in fun way is good news in my world. Nicely drawn characters too. I can’t think why I hadn’t heard of this book before happening upon it on the Red Cross shelves, or that there hasn’t been a film or TV production of it. It’s not as dark as ‘His Dark Materials’ which to my mind isn’t a children’s novel at all by the third book. Very heavy stuff that.

Jillian bought me ‘ Sisters of Sinai’ by Janet Soskice because she thought I should know about these remarkable Scottish twins who were born in Irvine, just 30 miles SW of Glasgow, in 1843. Their mother died two weeks after their birth and their unusual father, a lawyer, devoted himself to their upbringing. His views on what that meant where, for the times, unconventional but he set about it with a conviction with a conviction that enabled them to flout most conventions and disregard social boundaries thereafter. He believed in education (including physical fitness training)and the fact that his offspring were female seemed no reason for them not to learn to use their brains and bodies in the acquisition of knowledge and good health. They showed an aptitude for language so he promised them that for every language they set themselves to learn there would be a trip to the country that spoke it. It began a lifelong passion for linguistics and travel and led, as they were also passionate about their severe Presbyterian religion - to travels in the Bible lands. Eventually this caused them to make what must have seemed like a miraculous discovery; in an isolated monastery in Sinai they found pages of vellum on which were written four additional gospels. The twins, with scholarly male travel companions (and sometimes their husbands) translated these causing a furore throughout the Christian world. The discovery, which they insisted on being credited with in accordance with the part they had played, sadly brought them into dispute with the men who had travelled with them (and their wives!) and also with Cambridge men back home who were outraged by the temerity of these two 'uneducated' women.

It’s all beautifully written in a coolheaded sort of style though the story could easily lend itself to hyperbole!

Lesser considerations than scholastic moved me of course. Always when I read accounts of women travelling into lands dangerous for men, never mind for women, in the days before penicillin, anti-malarial drugs, decent dentists, Tampax. etc. etc. I am filled with total awe!

The third book of note that I’ve dipped into over the past week has been Ayya Khema ‘When the Iron Eagle Flies.’ Ayya Khema was born of Jewish parents in Berlin in 1923. In 1938 she was taken in a transport with 200 other Jewish children to Glasgow. She was only reunited with her parents two years later in Shanghai. At the onset of war the family was put into a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp where her father died. It wasn’t a great start to life but life is what we make of it and she, like the Ayrshire twins, carved out a notable one for herself, travelling with her husband in Asia and Tibet, learning meditation, teaching meditation and eventually becoming ordained as a Buddhist nun and being given the name Khema, which means safety and security.

This was a book that inspired me years ago, probably when it first came out in 1991. It is the teachings of the Buddha put in simple form and a guide to meditation toward Awareness. I haven't progressed very far along that path, but I have tried, spasmodically, and it has helped me. Once begun the quest for awareness never really ends. I was so pleased to find it again, (the book and the path!) the same edition and in really good condition - thanks be to Amazon!

What especially stayed in my memory was the source for the title: It is taken from a prophecy by an eighth century Indian sage who travelled to Tibet and helped establish Buddhism there.

“When the iron eagle flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered over the earth and the dhamma will go to the land of the red man.’ (The land of the red man is considered to be the wets as our skin looks pinkish-red to the Tibetans.

The advent of the aeroplane and the petrol engine did almost coincide with the forced exodus of Tibetan monks fleeing from the Chinese. I think that's emarkable.

It's almost as good having a friend to stay as going on holiday oneself, you get to see places you haven't seen before and revisit some that you wish you saw more often. Jillian flew up from Cambridgeshire to be here for a few days. It was the first time we had met for 25 years and as we compared notes we discovered we had both been through difficult times after the Brussels era, both gravitating to 'spiritual' centres though of very different natures. She spent time with the Little Gidding community and T.S. Eliot's work formed a backdrop to her search for wholeness after a bruising marriage break-up.

We had a lot of catching up to get through Happily for me she stayed in touch with many of the people we both knew so I also got to hear about their lives since I left. Between visiting the local beauty spots we looked for J's ancestors who, most amazingly, emigrated to New Zealand from this area in the late 19th century. We found the very farmhouse, not much bigger than a croft with sturdy stone outbuildings . They owned considerable acres but it must still have been hard making a living. We also found the tombstone of an earlier ancestor in the churchyard, the inscription still perfectly clear . After that the Family History facility was really helpful in providing even more details.

It seems so strange that Jillian now lives in the county where, since at least the 1500's, most of my ancestors lived out their lives as farmers, whilst I live where HER ancestors tilled the soil until they bravely set out to a newly opening continent with more exciting prospects.

We went to Johnson's woollen mill where J bought a skirt and we ate huge fluffy scones; we called in at the nearest distillery - two miles up the road from my house but I have never visited it before. We checked out the monks at Pluscarden who were at their mid-day worship, then when we picked up Sandy for his leave-out weekend he took us up to the Michael Kirk, built as a mausoleum for the Wizard of Gordonstoun.

We also ate and drank well. A time of abstinence is called for!

Night terrors.

After a brief run of Peter Robinson, who falls into my 'not bad but don't think I'll want to re-read' (nbnrr) category, on the basis of Chillsider's words I bought  Sophie Hannah, 'Lasting Damage,' currently on the shelves of Tesco. I suspect she may also be designated a place on the shelves I reserve for books the Cornish family might like because they're easy and fairly relaxing, with enough intrigue to hold the overwrought minds of  parents looking for a me-moment. 

Sophie certainly presents a convoluted plot which wasn't too obvious so gave some pleasure to unravel before the end. Too few crime writers bother with the tedious business of leaving clues, red herrings and surprises these days. They rely, lazily IMO, on shocking scenes of rape, torture, mutilation, decay and autopsy. It's getting boring.

She did also, less enjoyably, manage to frighten me in a way that gave me an asthma-fuelled, sweat-soaked nightmare. Different things upset us; for some it's sexually violence, for some the intruder in the house, for some it's madness. The last mentioned  is my personal terror button - not the madness of the killer but my own. For me the truly throat-gripping fear- raiser is the one  in which the main protagonist is being made to feel she is losing her mind because nothing she is experiencing can be believed by the people closest to her, or by those who should be able to help her.

Therein lies one of my problems I suppose. Bleurk!

Random thoughts.

Post boxes are getting hard to find here; dog poo bins on the other hand are becoming ubiquitous. The dpb's are red and shiney. I just know what I am going to do one dim, misty morning....

I liked the columnist who criticised her daughter's school sex education tutor for raising unrealistic hopes - the pupils were given condoms to practice putting on cucumbers!

Grandson had a taste of the essential differences between people's lives when one of his mates tried to get sanders to lend him his savings he could buy a pony. The friend assured him he was good for it: 'I can pay you back OK . I'm getting five and a half million when I'm 18.'

He's the grandson of a hard working couple who built up a local business into a huge food production company. The grandfather, I have reason to know, was a nice, kindly and generous man so it's impossible to feel annoyed or self-righteously outraged. Even so........

First meeting of the season of the local branch of NADFAS today and a notable first for me because I was there too! I finally joined something! The fact deserves another exclamation mark - !!

So the grand kick-off was a lecture (with slides of course) on Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I have never quite been a fan of CRM. firstly because over the last couple of decades he has suffered from overexposure and his designs copied onto tea-trays, tea towels, headscarves, mugs, bookmarks, jewellery, calendars etc. etc. Secondly because the examples I've seen of his furniture and architecture all feature his signature, uncompromisingly straight lines and the repetitive rose emblem and not nearly enough of his romantic stuff (considered 'spooky' by London critics in his day) the flights of imagination that often bring Aubrey Beardsley to mind. They get very little coverage which is a shame. Today I learned that those flights were most probably the work of his wife Margaret. Charles often signed her work - the reason for that is sadly obvious. Women artists weren’t taken seriously in those days.
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The lecturer wasn't the best, with a monotone voice and pacing which failed to hold my monkey mind, but fortunately (for me) he was very repetitive (my friend told me that - she HAD been listening...) so I picked up the main points the third or fourth time round. When I got home I found that I could have read most of them on Wikkipaedia. Not that I'm grumbling. I enjoyed the slides very much and learned that although Charles was born Glasgow his ancestry was in the Highlands of Scotland and he loved the hills and lochs and tried to incorporate the Celtic heritage into his art so the straight lines I somewhat dislike are symbolic of trees, the seeds and leaves are important to him for the same reasons. The other art he loved and allowed to influence him from the Japan, and that is visible in the simplicity of line and grace (now it’s been pointed out to me).

His wife Margaret was responsible for more than just back-up with the twiddlybits, she was an artist in her own right, also trained at the Glasgow School of Art, and is probably to thank for some of the 'spooky' designs that are so beautiful (almost but not quite pre-Raphaelite) also the lovely curvy features that surmount architectural works and pieces of furniture. She was one of the 'Glasgow Girls' of whom we hear little or nothing. She also have influenced Gustav Klimt (he acknowledged this) and other notable artists of the time.

The other sad fact I learned was that, like so many artists and poets, the Mackintoshes were ahead of their time and unappreciated in the parochial society of Glasgow though very popular in the rest of Europe, especially Vienna. Architectural commissions dwindled, the furniture didn’t sell so much and the tea rooms they were responsible for furnishing was considered something of a joke. It was opened to offer an alternative to the many public houses. The tea room looks to have been a beautiful place and I would love to have had tea there. The high-backed chairs almost screened the tea-takers. I can imagine having a highly enjoyable gossip at the tables.

Finding times hard they moved to Suffolk, unfortunately the moment they chose was 1914, and with the outbreak of war no-one was investing in building. The locals seem to regard him and his Scottish accent with mistrust for whilst the couple where out walking one day their house was raided and Charles was briefly arrested on suspicion of spying because so much correspondence was found with people in Vienna!

The moved to London where things went better but they still didn’t get commissions so they tried living in France but, though he painted some fine landscapes, that didn't work out either and eventually in ill health, they returned to London where Charles died, almost insolvent. Only 8 people showed up at the crematorium.

He may have been a difficult man to work with suffering as he did from a form of dyslexia often associated with high intelligence but difficulty in communication - or, perhaps, it was Aspergers Syndrome. It would have made communications with the people who wanted him to build for them very difficult and he was renowned for always going over budget! He also became, again like so many other artists, an alcoholic.

The thought that struck me was that certain artists these days who become millionaires are very, very good self-publicists, behave outrageously, attracting attention to themselves and making them rich. My guess is their work will fade quickly into obscurity so they are remembered by a line or two in a history of art coffee table book.

A Perfect Day.

The new Phil Rickman: 'The Secrets of Pain' arrived Friday, earlier than predicted when I preordered it from Amazon. Bit of a blow to the local economy but nevertheless VERY welcome. I read from the time I awoke this morning until now (1pm) and finished it. For me his books are the perfect blend of Mysticism, the mundanely mysterious and the more frighteningly inexplicaple, folk tales, legends - and crime. He slaloms through the conflicts of the quiet crumbling of the Church in the face of rationalism and cynicism whilst, through Merrily Watson and her Pagan daughter Jane, he touches on the deeper roots of the Sacred and the ineffable, which have very little to do with organised religion. Corruption in the Church and in local politics, the desecration of the countryside and the depredations of the money-makers who see the fields, forests, hills and villages of Herefordshire as a commodity, thinking nothing of destroying the archaeological presences that remain of our heritage, all this is witnessed and mourned by a few enjoyably human characters who by now have become almost as real to me as my own family.

The last day of summer? This was at least ten days ago when I sat in the sunshine, with coffee and cake, getting slighly burned around the glasses, watching Sandy trying to master the little Topaz (very slightly larger than a Topper but still with the open stern design that does away with the need for bailing.) Moments like this give me time-warp sensations as I feel myself watching my son doing much the same slightly frantic manoeuvres when he was learning to sail single-handed. Weird.

In the first photo (from the bottom up) he was trying to rescue - and then hold onto - another Topaz that one of the younger idiots hadn't beached high enough so it escaped.
Sanders got some impressive rope burns and no thanks from the YI's for his pains.

Since then the weather has been worse than autumn - autumn without the colours; grey, dreich and dismally wet. It hs picked up a bit this weekend but I've been too busy reading to notice.

Cultural mores.

We have quite a lot of Japanese and Chinese in this area, attracted initially by the Foundation but many stay to make new lives for themselves. I'm ashamed to say I have trouble telling the difference between the nationalities. Just when I think I have it down the person in front of me turns out to be Korean. What they all have in common are excellent manners and the habit of bowing whenever they feel they have been given a service. After a customer has bowed their thanks to me I feel I want to bow back, so often do. Then I find myself bowing to the next customer who is probably local and thinks I have taken leave of my senses.

I'm in the middle of enforced belt- tightening (direct result of too much enjoyment it seems to me, and therefore VERY unfair) so last week, in desperate need of entertainment but unable to indulge in new reading matter, I splurged £5 on 5 books in the Red Cross shop and felt very pleased with myself for a nice tight clean and varied collection. The weekend weather was grim (still is), just right for reading and I dug into what I hoped would be a light, fluffy, feel-good chic-lit 'The Friday Night Knitting Club' by Kate Jacob. I was disappointed - dismally and depressingly. Not expecting great literature I forgave her the cliche phrases but couldn't forgive the cliche characters, for instance the Scottish grannie who was everything an American dreams a grannie living in Scotland should be and of course isn't. In that is same episode the word 'compact' arrived three times in three paragraphs. I suppose it's the polite New Yorker's way of saying small and a bit pokey.

None of this would have been especially serious - after all it's chic-lit not Virginia Woolf - but the story began to drag and I wondered what she was going to fill in the remaining pages with when suddenly the main character found she had cancer, advanced, and I thought 'Oh THAT'S how she's filling out the pages...' It felt like an afterthought. The tale was thereafter depressing, had spurious messages and a flagging, ineffectual attempt at a positive denouement, but was definitely not what I had signed up for, to use a cliche myself.

Rather strangely, Kate Jacob's book was published the same year as Joanna Trollope's 'Friday Nights' which has a similar theme. It isn't in the same league!

Feeling very gloomy, and still seeing nothing on TV worth watching, I reached for a third time into my little cache.

Kate Moss wrote 'The Labrynth' I couldn't get into that but thought she had something so the short novel (started life as a novella
apparently) set in modern times but also in Cathar country looked interestingly spooky. I miscalculated again. Cathars, as I should know by
now, came to very unpleasant ends and don't lend themselves to lighthearted literature. Much much better written than the Knitting Club it
was still too sad for my mood, which by now needed lifting out of the Slough and above the grey skies outside, thank you.

In desperation I reached for a third, Rose Tremain, the tale of an East European immigrant and his attempts to find work in England so he can send money back to his mother and daughter. It is as harsh and worrying as reading about such hard lives must be, shows British society in the shamefully hollow, celebrity-loving careless light it deserves, but her style makes it unsentimental reading with flashes of humour and human kindnesses that off-set the tragedies. Not too bad for the spirits and at least offers some food for the soul.

Still two more to go, one of which is by a new Swedish crime-writer. In the end I will return to crime. It's safe!

My 2 1/2 year old grandson chomped up two or three of his mum's Nurofen tabs (can hardly blame him as they look like those fruity sweeties he is given...) We thought/hoped he spat them out sharpish when the taste hit, checked with a local medic who pretty much shrugged his shoulders and said not to worry, so we didn't worry. Good thing the latest news about Nurofen Plus hadn't hit the headlines!

Theo, the great experimenter, has been known to eat worm tablets brought in for the dogs, and to climb the staircase on the outside of the bannisters until he got to the top, about 8 ft above a tiled floor, where, not quite knowing how to reverse, he hung for some time, like a koala bear, until noticed by his elder brother.

He systematically removed all the little caps from those springy door- stop thingies in my house in the three days the family stayed, and a towel holder in the downstairs loo fell to pieces in his hands. I wonder what he will find to dismantle at Christmas when they stay for 10 days and there is no outside activity to distract? My ex fixed child- frustraters on all the kitchen cupboards but I have a feeling has worked them out....

Maybe I shouldn't have taken that photo of him with the chain- saw. It was a 'working' plastic toy but may have given him ideas. The dummy makes him look so harmless too.
His loving family have nicknamed him 'Seek-and-destroy'.

My car, born 2002, one careful owner, is getting a bit long in the gasket, so it was with heart in mouth I left it for it's MOT today. Hooray and thanks be to excellent workmanship by VW, it has passed yet another year.

It does have intermittent starting problems which make my palms sweat when I find myself in a queue for petrol or sitting in the drive-thru' car wash..... Will it start or will I be covered with embarrassment whilst it chugs and refuses to fire? This eventuality will bring all the men in the vicinity rushing to tell me what to do and what not to do... I know it will fire up in the end, create an appalling smell of oil, and glide off as if nothing had happened, but in the meantime I have to listen politely to all their theories and their anecdotes about the garage where I have had it checked twice ( of course it behaves beautifully for them!)

Time to play in the shop today so, without book or extra crosswords, I paged through the blogs following on from mine. Strangely they were mostly foreign. First was a poetry blog from Malaysia and, though I couldn't read the verses, the sound as I played the syllables phonetically in my head, was beautiful. Then came a shoal of Muslim ladies with bright photos of themselves and their families. They were succeeded by blogs in Arabic script with more family photos. After them I found myself in India amongst pictures of the Ganges and Indian architecture, more unreadable words but lots of strong energy, and finally a couple of book review sites from the States and Australia,.

Do these sites change daily? I suspect they are called up in arbitrary fashion, like a bingo drum. I started with Chillside's site and got a succession of quilters so perhaps there is a word- association sorting going on, though why that should get me so many foreign sites beats me.

Tried Walled Garden then as the starting point and got a school education site then several sites about US politics. Don't think the word-association theory works after all.

I shall use this for scrying I think. Could work as well as Runes or the I Ching and is a lot less messy than entrails. For today I'll take the heavy preponderance of unreadable language as a hint to start enjoying the visual and brooding less on the Word.

Sandy's first (unpowered) flight.

Sequence works from the bottom up.

On the way to the airfield he said: 'I've overcome my fear of heights gran!"
I almost screeched to a halt. 'You had a fear of heights and you let me buy you a voucher for a gliding lesson?!!!'
'Oh yeah. But I'm OK now. Really!'

He was VERY excited - and also nervous - during what seemed to me to be an interminable wait for the tow plane pilot to get back from a domestic duty, and other planes to land. The instructor, ex-RAF, was brilliant, cheery, oozing inspiring confidence and enthusiasm. He taught Sanders the controls and proceedure whilst they waited. Sanders got pinker and pinker. I got very windblown and admired the scenery - and the ever changing cloudscape.

Then the tow pilot arrived (at least they weren't being winched up.. that is really hard to watch) got through the check in the ex-RAF Chipmunk (Supermunk) tug, and suddenly everything was Go. They were off. They were a foot off the ground, higher at first than the tow-plane then levelling out together and getting higher until they were nearly into the clouds. The tow line dropped and the plane disappeared. They circled in front of the dark underside of a cumulous cloud for a while then they too disappeared. For twenty minutes, or a hundred years, I stared up at the sky which seemed to change all the time. Could that be good? When they, at last, reappeared and approached for landing they were doing a lot of banking and - wobbling? but the landing looked smooth enough.

The recovery landrover gave me a lift down to meet them. Sandy was ecstatic. Wanted to go up again. Hasn't stopped talking about it. He's saving up for a glider.

The instructor said with a certain careful blandness: 'Conditions were interesting up there,' shooting a look at a colleague that told me Sanders had had a more exciting flight than normal. I was right about the changing clouds. Conditions included thermals that suddenly cut out and a 'wave' that gives the same effect as being in a boat on a choppy sea. A blustery wind was an additional factor.

Wouldn't have suited granny.

I do love stained glass and the sun was shining through this window whilst a packed church listened to tributes to a good friend. I couldn't take my own photo which was a shame as the light reflected around was almost more beautiful than the window itself.

The church was packed full of people who had known Donald and, I would say, had all loved him, for one reason or another. Headmaster of an Academy (the Scottish variety, not the newly minted English version) he rebelled against the pen-pushing and box-ticking that Heads are supposed to occupy their time with, so there were plenty of stories of him losing vital papers in the village stream whilst hurrying to a football training, or crawling on hands and knees under the secretaries window to get out of school without being caught - so he could get to a football training. It was said that he would rather take a bollocking himself than let a student take it, and that the children who couldn't hope to achieve much academically he would get to smile by letting them drop chalk into his ever-present coffee cup from time to time.

I remember that the first time I went to a book fair he sat down beside me and talked to me like an old friend. I heard another book dealer say exactly the same thing. We had both been far more welcomed by Donald into the book trade than by the head honcho, King Larry - but then as I say that I remember something else that was repeated several times about Donald this afternoon - he never said a bad word about anyone.

Probably the main reason I enjoyed being at that particular book fair was the time I spent with Donald. It struck me very early on in my connection with the trade that there are still a few potential curiosities amongst its occasionally grumpy, often dusty denizens. I was quite entranced by actually being talked to by one of them. It helped that he loved poetry and went to Oxford, which city I imagine saw the beginnings of his book-collecting. His collection, when I finally got to see it, was - is - enviable. He had many of the books I would have loved to have for myself, always first editions, often in beautiful condition and far beyond my financial reach, all crammed unceremoniously into a small, smoky, ash-filled room in a council house. I only hope he is happily rooting through the Akashic records now, and that they are suitably well-bound.

For my part I'm frustrated by not being able to express the essence of a man that I didn't know for very long, or even meet up with very often, but who somehow made a vast impression on me. He probably influenced me more than many people I've known much longer and much better. What I am mournfully aware of is the loss of a big personality who made everyone he came in contact with feel important to him, even a bit interesting for a while. Thank you Donald.

One of the results of spending 10 days with my younger grandsons is to get me very hot under the collar about state education and since I can't add more photos at present I may as well vent! Fin is 5yrs 6mths and is at school from 9am to 3pm ish - it might be later. After that he gets homework. The school is already 'grouping' them - in my day that would have been called streaming - and his mum is thinking of getting him extra tuition in maths and reading because if he falls behind he feels a failure. The ethos seems to be entirely structured to achievement and results of a measurable kind, no interest paid to social development, and far far from nurturing the whole child. It's soulless. The reading books are unimaginative and - soulless too, no rhythm, no enjoyment of language... A million miles from Dr. Zeus.

Both parents would like a Steiner School in the area but already the state education has taken their son beyond the point where that system would want to try to integrate him. Steiner claimed that a child forced to read, write or do anything before the appropriate age would suffer from depression when he/she arrived at that age and lose interest in learning. This might sound ridiculous but none of my three read until they were well past 10yrs have all done well with degrees etc. and are, in the main, well-balanced, emotionally mature human beings.

OK there are other factors but - I still think it's all going horribly wrong!!

Ballater belles and beasts.

There were many more but I only managed to get these - hope the Ex got some. 'Oor Wullie' is by Bryn and Marilyn who run the wonderful Deeside Books.

Hadji's on safari.

Auditioning for Chainsaw Massacre 2

Probably the best photo opportunity of the Hadji hols was in Iain's yard.

Oh dear. Just had news of a book-collector friend's death. I had been meaning to contact him... Lesson there....

I suppose one has to get used to this now!

Two days with more activity than usual for this person: The last Harry P (in 3D) Friday in Inverness, followed by afternoon lunch (lupper or sunch) by the bay. On Saturday I spent 2 hours standing in the sunshine with my grandson, watching gliders being put together like balsa wood models and then winched into the air on piano strings. Unlike me he is passionate about flying and longing to go up in a glider. He wasn't put off by the sight of the tiny cockpit and the abrupt ascent on the end of a ridiculously thin hawser so I'm giving him a trial lesson for his birthday.

Did I remember the camera? Of course not.

I got a sunburnt nose and cheeks. Very unglamorous.

Today the funeral of a friend's mother brought another very good friend back into my life for an hour or two. Wish we lived closer.

Melatonin

Found this on Wikki:

Mood disorders
Melatonin has been shown to be effective in treating one form of depression and seasonal affective disorder, and is being considered for bipolar and other disorders in which circadian disturbances are involved. It has been observed that bipolar disorder might have, as a "trait marker" (something that is characteristic of being bipolar, that does not change with state), supersensitivity to light, i.e., a greater decrease in melatonin secretion in response to light exposure at night. This could be contrasted with drug-free recovered bipolar patients not showing light hypersensitivity.

Sanders doesn't show any signs of being bipolar and neither do I, luckily for us, but there is a shortage of light up here so the SAD is definitely a problem.