Oh how I wish I could paint - or sew! These roots are polished by the passage of many feet on their way to the river bank.
31 Jul 2008
The variety of lichens in the woods here must be a lichen hunter's dream. Those little black specks are a sort I have never seen before. I believe they are all good for giving different dye colours.
Whilst Tom looked after the store I spent some time by the river discovering that I have no head for heights these days. The paths alongside the Findhorn at this point are truly scary.
30 Jul 2008
Mr McSeed
Today I take on the health and well-being of Mr. McSeed. A heavy responsibility indeed. Mr. McSeed is a hamster. At least the rabbit is going elsewhere this year. I can't bear to see her in her cage so she eats the furniture in the sunroom. There's no grass for her in my garden and far too many cats. The one time I tried leaving her outside the biggest fattest cat sat atop her cage swinging his tail like the cat in that children's book series about a rabbit? hamster? (Brain's gone dead. I blame the sun.) Hah! 'Olga da Polga.' Hamster. I think.
For reasons made clear in the comments following this passage Mr. McSeed will not be allowed out of his palatial three story mansion during his stay.
Sandy is good at imaginative names. Mr.M started as Hammy - sorry I have been reminded it was 'Mouse' (a name that appealed to Sandy's highly developed sense of the absurd) but soon this wasn't elegant enough. When he was four he got a plastic beetle in a cracker then scoured the house for a box he could put it in (he had been listening to Christopher Robin poems) and his beetle lived by his bed for years; is even now kept carefully in a toy box. It disappeared once and hell, as only a five year old can create it, broke loose. That beetle was called Todhunny Beekle.
His uncle Costa, now a muscular 6'4" 28 year old, can be made to blush when reminded of his imaginary friend Alice and the language they used. A word that sticks in my head is 'Alishka-shloshkan.' As he was a very late talker (two sisters? and anyway Chloe who rarely stopped talking once she started) I began to wonder if he had been Slovinian in a former life-time.
I have these random thoughts.
For reasons made clear in the comments following this passage Mr. McSeed will not be allowed out of his palatial three story mansion during his stay.
Sandy is good at imaginative names. Mr.M started as Hammy - sorry I have been reminded it was 'Mouse' (a name that appealed to Sandy's highly developed sense of the absurd) but soon this wasn't elegant enough. When he was four he got a plastic beetle in a cracker then scoured the house for a box he could put it in (he had been listening to Christopher Robin poems) and his beetle lived by his bed for years; is even now kept carefully in a toy box. It disappeared once and hell, as only a five year old can create it, broke loose. That beetle was called Todhunny Beekle.
His uncle Costa, now a muscular 6'4" 28 year old, can be made to blush when reminded of his imaginary friend Alice and the language they used. A word that sticks in my head is 'Alishka-shloshkan.' As he was a very late talker (two sisters? and anyway Chloe who rarely stopped talking once she started) I began to wonder if he had been Slovinian in a former life-time.
I have these random thoughts.
29 Jul 2008
Keeping cool and keeping it together.
Hot steamy weather again today that the thunderstorm Sunday didn't manage to clear. We don't often get thunderstorms in this part of the world for some reason. It happened whilst I was on my way to the riding stable to pick up Sandy. I stopped off at his house to feed a carrot to his rabbit and the heavens opened, all over me. Bunny was pleased with her organic carrot and fresh hay but didn't fancy a run in the garden. She's not daft.
When I eventually got up to the stables I discovered the Yard empty of children. They had all removed tack, washed off the ponies, returned them to the fields, and then vanished. The adults, too busy with their own horses and their gossiping, hadn't noticed. Yes, the children had been told that leaving the yard without an adult was strictly forbidden, but any child-wise adult would expect such restrictions to be forgotten when no eye is upon them and hectares of cool forest and river bank call out to them on a hot day.
The stable girls chose the one with the loudest voice to yell. I was standing much too close. My ears are still ringing. When the echoes had died there was an ominous silence. Brave attempts at jesting were made: 'I'll ring their necks when they get back.' 'Get in line!' Thoughts of the River Findhorn and its tendency, after heavy rain, for flash floods which cause it to rise from 0 - 10 feet in seconds gave the laughter a tense edge. One of the children, the tiny fierce Marina, could all too easily be swept away and I imagined Sandy trying to save her... It seemed like an age before voices were heard and small figures appeared in the distance plodding up the steep field. We counted. All present. Fear fled, anger followed. We left the owner of the riding stables, a venerable lady of 80 plus who has seen many many generations of children grow up alongside their ponies (and survive) met them first. We stood respectfully aside whilst she verbally, expertly, gave them a dressing down. Eventually a chastened and rather white Sandy joined me with head hanging to say 'Sorry Granny' in a very small voice. As he was by no means the oldest of the pack I decided he had had quite enough chastising and we headed for home in friendly unity. The Famous Five never had this trouble with adults.
Happily for both of us his grandfather had opened a nice bottle of white and got it deliciously cold; he had also bought a set of Asterix and Obelix DVD's so Sandy chilled out with sparkling elderflower in the 'music room' (which is in the cool basement of the house and has the DVD player with an enormous screen) whilst I declenched in the upstairs rooms with sympathetic adults and Gewurtztraminer. Sometimes I remember the French for 'to make tense:' Crisper. It expressed nicely how I was feeling. Crisped.
Yesterday the High Street, though having one of the inexplicable local holidays, was full and the shop did well. I sold the 6 vol Folio Society Proust for someone's light holiday reading and made lots of lesser sales, which is always good. Selling the pricey stuff is nice (I am not knocking it, heaven knows!) but selling a lot of small and easily replaced stock is better in the long run.
Today it has gone quiet again. I started to read the free copy of The London Review of Books sent to me recently to tempt me to sign up. It's full of articles and reviews about books I will never want to read, but there is one on Doris Lessing which looks interesting. I like these sentences: 'She has not, over the long haul, troubled her readers with complexities of design or of language; on the whole she prefers transparency.' That is precisely what I value about Lessing. It's not the fancy footwork one is meant to be dazzled by but the content, or, as the writer of the article says: 'The claim on ordinary readers is not that they should wonder at her virtuosity but that they should consider the truth of what she says.'
I also noticed a letter about a library of books which is very beautiful but seldom read, 'Like beauties no one dares ask for a dance.' The letter writer suggests that part of the problem is the publishers' preference for omnibus editions. 'You might want to read The Princess Casamamissa butit is off-putting to have to take down Henry James Novels 1886-90 Individual works hidden in an omnibus don't take their places in your memory as easily as a particular spine on a particular shelf.' He goes on to say that good thin paper has the virtue of being portable and that portability is a quality to be valued in a book. Making the book large cancels out this attribute . Whilst paperbacks offer easy portage the paper is poor qualty, yellows fast and if often read they fall to pieces, whereas a well-bound hardback is a pleasure to handle and a good investment.
Makes sense to me.
When I eventually got up to the stables I discovered the Yard empty of children. They had all removed tack, washed off the ponies, returned them to the fields, and then vanished. The adults, too busy with their own horses and their gossiping, hadn't noticed. Yes, the children had been told that leaving the yard without an adult was strictly forbidden, but any child-wise adult would expect such restrictions to be forgotten when no eye is upon them and hectares of cool forest and river bank call out to them on a hot day.
The stable girls chose the one with the loudest voice to yell. I was standing much too close. My ears are still ringing. When the echoes had died there was an ominous silence. Brave attempts at jesting were made: 'I'll ring their necks when they get back.' 'Get in line!' Thoughts of the River Findhorn and its tendency, after heavy rain, for flash floods which cause it to rise from 0 - 10 feet in seconds gave the laughter a tense edge. One of the children, the tiny fierce Marina, could all too easily be swept away and I imagined Sandy trying to save her... It seemed like an age before voices were heard and small figures appeared in the distance plodding up the steep field. We counted. All present. Fear fled, anger followed. We left the owner of the riding stables, a venerable lady of 80 plus who has seen many many generations of children grow up alongside their ponies (and survive) met them first. We stood respectfully aside whilst she verbally, expertly, gave them a dressing down. Eventually a chastened and rather white Sandy joined me with head hanging to say 'Sorry Granny' in a very small voice. As he was by no means the oldest of the pack I decided he had had quite enough chastising and we headed for home in friendly unity. The Famous Five never had this trouble with adults.
Happily for both of us his grandfather had opened a nice bottle of white and got it deliciously cold; he had also bought a set of Asterix and Obelix DVD's so Sandy chilled out with sparkling elderflower in the 'music room' (which is in the cool basement of the house and has the DVD player with an enormous screen) whilst I declenched in the upstairs rooms with sympathetic adults and Gewurtztraminer. Sometimes I remember the French for 'to make tense:' Crisper. It expressed nicely how I was feeling. Crisped.
Yesterday the High Street, though having one of the inexplicable local holidays, was full and the shop did well. I sold the 6 vol Folio Society Proust for someone's light holiday reading and made lots of lesser sales, which is always good. Selling the pricey stuff is nice (I am not knocking it, heaven knows!) but selling a lot of small and easily replaced stock is better in the long run.
Today it has gone quiet again. I started to read the free copy of The London Review of Books sent to me recently to tempt me to sign up. It's full of articles and reviews about books I will never want to read, but there is one on Doris Lessing which looks interesting. I like these sentences: 'She has not, over the long haul, troubled her readers with complexities of design or of language; on the whole she prefers transparency.' That is precisely what I value about Lessing. It's not the fancy footwork one is meant to be dazzled by but the content, or, as the writer of the article says: 'The claim on ordinary readers is not that they should wonder at her virtuosity but that they should consider the truth of what she says.'
I also noticed a letter about a library of books which is very beautiful but seldom read, 'Like beauties no one dares ask for a dance.' The letter writer suggests that part of the problem is the publishers' preference for omnibus editions. 'You might want to read The Princess Casamamissa butit is off-putting to have to take down Henry James Novels 1886-90 Individual works hidden in an omnibus don't take their places in your memory as easily as a particular spine on a particular shelf.' He goes on to say that good thin paper has the virtue of being portable and that portability is a quality to be valued in a book. Making the book large cancels out this attribute . Whilst paperbacks offer easy portage the paper is poor qualty, yellows fast and if often read they fall to pieces, whereas a well-bound hardback is a pleasure to handle and a good investment.
Makes sense to me.
26 Jul 2008
A belly laugh and a bolt for freedom.
I had a flirtation with a dating web site a while back, just to see what it was like and to admire the self-aggrandisement of Mr. T who is still at it, by the bye; thinks he is a mirror wherein, presumably, lucky women can see their souls. He'd need to clean himself up a bit for that IMO, and maybe get re-silvered.
****
About himself Mr T says:
“I'm the card that's so high and wild you'll never need another.”
- Wow!! Irresistable bombast.
About the person Mr T is looking for:
“A woman who feels the need to be more open and honest than she has ever been before.”
- It is to be hoped she keeps her purse closed however.
The three most precious things to Mr T are:
“ Love - that's all there is “
Really? Coming from Mr. T that last has to rate as 'a bit rich.' He's also lost some time as he's now posting as 58. Alien abduction maybe.
It's good for a laugh though, and personally I do value a good laugh above all things, so I suppose he could be said to be adding to the sum of human happiness.
***
Any new friendship at this point isn't interesting to me but part of me wondered nervously if this was a sign of incipient deterioration into Seriously Old Age. In other words I felt I SHOULD still want male friends and dates and the promise of sexual encounter and so on. I stuck at it long enough to find out that I have definitely switched off. It was nice (ish) to find there were still men out there who like talking to me but a great relief to be able to keep them at a distance.
In fact, all round, I have a sense of freedom. Looking back, as one does when there isn't much else to do, I wonder how much of my need for relationship was habit and pride. Habit dies hard, indoctrination or hormones or genetics or - well, I don't know how many excitations there might be to keep this going in ones psyche - they are even harder to subdue. There's also pride. I did hate the image I had of myself as an unwanted woman, an image with no real foundation in fact. Now I see that, even if I had been 'unwanted' in the intersex games, there was a powerful part of me that had withdrawn from the game long ago but didn't quite realise it. A part of me has been looking for this freedom like an alcoholic or a smoker looks for release but hasn't quite got the will power to make it happen. Another part, equally strong, has been sabotaging every attempt because it wanted quite the opposite.
Maybe there's a book about these troublesome sub-personality clashes.
Maybe it would be amusing to write one. It has been really uncomfortable living with them sometimes.
****
About himself Mr T says:
“I'm the card that's so high and wild you'll never need another.”
- Wow!! Irresistable bombast.
About the person Mr T is looking for:
“A woman who feels the need to be more open and honest than she has ever been before.”
- It is to be hoped she keeps her purse closed however.
The three most precious things to Mr T are:
“ Love - that's all there is “
Really? Coming from Mr. T that last has to rate as 'a bit rich.' He's also lost some time as he's now posting as 58. Alien abduction maybe.
It's good for a laugh though, and personally I do value a good laugh above all things, so I suppose he could be said to be adding to the sum of human happiness.
***
Any new friendship at this point isn't interesting to me but part of me wondered nervously if this was a sign of incipient deterioration into Seriously Old Age. In other words I felt I SHOULD still want male friends and dates and the promise of sexual encounter and so on. I stuck at it long enough to find out that I have definitely switched off. It was nice (ish) to find there were still men out there who like talking to me but a great relief to be able to keep them at a distance.
In fact, all round, I have a sense of freedom. Looking back, as one does when there isn't much else to do, I wonder how much of my need for relationship was habit and pride. Habit dies hard, indoctrination or hormones or genetics or - well, I don't know how many excitations there might be to keep this going in ones psyche - they are even harder to subdue. There's also pride. I did hate the image I had of myself as an unwanted woman, an image with no real foundation in fact. Now I see that, even if I had been 'unwanted' in the intersex games, there was a powerful part of me that had withdrawn from the game long ago but didn't quite realise it. A part of me has been looking for this freedom like an alcoholic or a smoker looks for release but hasn't quite got the will power to make it happen. Another part, equally strong, has been sabotaging every attempt because it wanted quite the opposite.
Maybe there's a book about these troublesome sub-personality clashes.
Maybe it would be amusing to write one. It has been really uncomfortable living with them sometimes.
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