Not-so-sleepy summer days

Dizzy and Siggy (Seigmund) in a quieter moment. Some illustrations from the folk tales. No other useful photos at present.

Nobody is blogging much these days - summer time and the living is easy (oh for a beautiful rich singing voice). Sort of. The weather is easy anyway. There is an unusual amount of activity in this corner of the world, causing me to feel disjointed and spread about. Not sure coherence is going to come easy, so I’m going to make a list:

1.  Meetings  about the Culture Day event coming up in September. 

 The links with Macbeth are to be exploited (the town being mentioned in the Scottish Play) Witches will go shopping in the Co-op and chemists for ‘Eye of Newt’ etc. and will sit out by the Tolbooth hubbling and bubbling away dressed in normal costume. Lady Macbeth will feature in a hairdressers trying to get out the damn spot and the drunken porter will lurch about the town speiling his complaints. macbeth will sit mournfully in a coffee shop gazing into his cup and growling about ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...’We shall probably all get carted off by men in white suits or the police......

I have offered daughter’s shop for poetry readings and thought up a poetry-oriented interaction: Pick-a-poem from a coffee tin full of rolled up poems. The picker can keep their poem and might (the inducement to participate) win a bottle of whisky or box of chocs or some other prize we hope will be donated. Volanteers  will wander the streets with the tins and the prizes will be in the shop where the poetry readings are going on.  Finding suitable poems to print and roll will occupy much spare time over the coming months.

2. The local campaign against the purchase of a beautiful green stretch of land and trees that lies under our town, all along one side of it, is hotting up. The  company wishing to purchase is called Redco Milne and is thought to be  Tesco. We’ve already got one of those, and a Lidl and Sainsbury about 6 miles away, and another huge Tesco 8 miles away.The plan is for  lots and lots of  of concrete, another supermarket+car park+petrol station+large ugly retail outlets which will drain what little business is surviving in the actual town centre. So if you hear about me being chained to a tree it should not come as a surprise. It’s the first time I’ve ever got myself involved in local politics - never been to a meeting before. Even just sticking a toe in I am finding  a bit scary, but the blood is up. (Probably the BP too.)

Grandson had his exams and then a mini nervous breakdown as the results came in. He doesn’t do well at exams, poor lamb. Nothing wrong with his intelligence, he just panics. He also has his grandmother’s genetic inability to understand maths. He’s got another year to get his head round it before the GCSE’s but first he has to overcome Despair. The students are also all exhausted and grumpy with each other, practically to the point of fisticuffs, so he had to have a couple of R&R days.

I had another poem accepted by a reputable magazine and am running up a list of writing projects I really want to get on with, if everything else would only settle down. I’ve divided up the folktales into three and am having them printed as small booklets which can be offered at a reasonable price. After the excitement of getting ‘The Witching’ on line and receiving the printed book I’ve taken it off the lists because the cost is ridiculous. Good lesson though. I don’t regret it at all.

All that and nice outings with the doglet (a friend has a dachshund puppy so we have playdates together ending up in dog-friendly cafe’s), is making this a very pleasant summer so far. Saturday there is a charity Rotary night which involves betting on horses...????  More of that after the event.