A Visual Hug

That is what I thought when I blog hopped along to Noticing Project via A Little Bird Told Me. If you are into photography or pleasing images in any way then this is a good place to tarry for a while.

I may get to write some more later on but today is a busy day for me doing essential domestic maintenance which I must get right back to once I have finished my cup of tea.

Hope you have a pleasantly productive day too

Soup, beauuuuuutiful soup

After reading about Technodoll's fabulous sounding soup, I thought I'd have a go at making some of my own.

Fry up half a chopped onion, half a sliced leek, 4 halved new charlotte potatoes, 1 sliced carrot, a few chopped slices of chorizo, 1 can of green lentils, 1 can of butter beans, 1 sliced parsnip, a few splashes of tobasco, pepper, herbs de Provence and a little salt. Then add enough water to fill the pan.
Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes, pad out with rice if desperate for carbs.

This is perfect for a chilly British Summer afternoon. Eat in front of the fire staring out at the swallows on the telephone wires who are probably plotting an early migration this year...

Day 6 of the Summer holidays

How to keep the kids amused very cheaply and for quite some time:


Give them a hoofing great big car to clean.

Sunday Scribblings - Solace

This, of course, is not mine, but I have no words that convey solace as this poem has.

Walk Within You

If I be the first of us to die,

Let grief not blacken long your sky.

Be bold yet modest in your grieving.

There is a change but not a leaving.

For just as death is part of life,

The dead live on forever in the living.

And all the gathered riches of our journey,

The moments shared, the mysteries explored,

The steady layering of intimacy stored,

The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,

The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

The wordless language of look and touch,

The knowing,

Each giving and each taking,

These are not flowers that fade,

Nor trees that fall and crumble,

Nor are they stone,

For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand

And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

What we were, we are.

What we had, we have.

A conjoined past imperishably present.

So when you walk the woods where once we walked together

And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,

Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,

And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

Be still.

Clear your eyes.

Breathe.

Listen for my footfall in your heart.

I am not gone but merely walk within you.

~ Nicholas Evans

A passage from The Smoke Jumper

To find out where other writers seek solace, check out Sunday Scribblings

Day 3 of the Summer holidays

Was a truly death defying day...

The amount of cholesterol that passed under my hands would make a dietician weep.

The fancy bread and butter pudding that we had for afters tea time. Made with croissants, apricot conserve and an awful lot of cream, it is not for the faint hearted. It doesn't look much here but I did not have time to take a picture of it cooked in all its golden bubbly glory. Deserts don't last long in our house

And the blackcurrant ice cream. Rose helped: beating the eggs, stirring the custard (more cream anyone?) sieving the stewed currants. However, the tasting did not go so well, blackcurrants are pretty tangy aren't they? And after her face puckered up for the second time she declined to taste any more.

I had a taste this morning and it's pretty good actually. Am I bad mum when I say that I am glad that I don't have to share this with my children?

Day 2 of the Summer Holidays

Day 2 (yesterday): I mostly caught up on the housework that I neglected over the weekend and V went to get his malaria tablets for his trip to Uganda. It was another beautiful day, too nice to ignore so after all the humdrum stuff was done we went for a walk to the falls in Melyn Court.

This is just a hop skip and a jump away from where we live and we come here quite often. The air was warm and green smelling but as we got closer to the falls, the occasional pleasantly cool breath of water wafted over us.

We saw dippers (small water birds) by the stream. Unfortunately, they were shy and refused to pose for me.

It is possible to walk behind these falls. I never have though, the path is slippery and uneven... bad news for smalls.

Even though the dippers declined, my family has no problem at all with posing :o)

It is quite grey today, cool with drifting soft rain but just sometimes the cloud thins a little and the sky takes on this strange silvery gold glow. It is very beautiful but the picture I took did not capture it at all.
Today we will make the ice cream that we did not have time to do yesterday.
Hope you have a gentle day today too.

Day 1 of the Summer Holidays

It was a truly beautiful day. The first sunny day in ages it seems. So we packed a picnic and headed out to the Vale of Glamorgan

and Hendrewellan Pick Your Own Fruit farm. We ate our sandwiches under a shady tree and in the company of two gentle old Labradors who were very polite and merely hinted that they would not be averse to a crust or two if we had a mind to it. We duly shared our lunch, they thanked us and pottered off to the next family to see if they minded feeding two gentlefolk landed on hard times etc etc.

It was very hot out in the field, hats and sunblock were in order. Eden and Lily did very well with finding the sneaky hidden raspberries that other people had missed. Being three foot high has its advantages sometimes. V did not find it so easy. Spotting red berries on thick green foliage cannot be easy when a bloke is colour blind.

The blackcurrants were much easier to pick. But the ground was uneven which led to more than one fall (and tipped punnets) Eden was fairly pragmatic about the first tip but was not a happy bunny the second time she did it.

On the way home we called in on Merthyr Mawr, a tiny village filled with houses like the above. It is one of my favourite places to visit. There is nothing to do here apart from stare at stranger's houses but the cottages are just so cute.
I would not want to live in one mind you, they are rather too much to live up to I think - I'll stick to my untidy little miners cottage on a scraggy mountain any day - but they are lovely to visit.

The fruits of our labours. Probably about 5lb in all.

Blackcurrants smell rather evil* to me even though I love the taste, but warm raspberries smell heavenly. There was pavlova for tea, naturally. I would have taken a picture but I was in too much of a hurry to scarf down the raspberries, meringue and cream to find the camera. It didn't look up to much, rather messy meringues tsk tsk but it tasted great. Believe me.

The second day of holidays will be taken up in the making of blackcurrant ripple ice cream. Hope you are having fun too.


*a bit like cat wee

Two Requests

Because POD asked for music. Now, I think music is one of the things that makes life worth living but I am not fussed on blogs that play it automatically - that's just me though. But if I did have a little blog widgit to play music then Come Away With Me would be first on the play list. The video is rather obscure but who cares when a girl has a voice like that?

And if you have a spare ten minutes then you might want to play this one too. It is rather long, but there are three songs in there written by Paddy McAloon aka "the Fred Astaire of words"

The Princess and the Dragon

This is a stand in dragon for the moment as the story sack dragon is still under construction. He will be done in classic red satin but for now Slither is doing a fine job I think. Slither is Rose's pet dragon (every girl should have one) and he was made by my mum. She very cleverly filled him with polystyrene beads so he makes a beautiful rustling noise when he moves.
I have to say I am very pleased with Princess. After all, what girl, at one time in her life or other, has not longed for waist length silky blonde hair? Eden has really taken to her though so I think I will shortly have to make another for her...and then two more because even though the other two are not really fussed on dolls, they will refuse to be left out of a toy fest.

It is the school fete today and this entails me doing a four hour face painting gig later on. So now I need some fortification... hot tea and plenty of it.

Hope you have a fun filled colourful day too.

One Single Impression - Rest

Not rest as in sleep, but the rest one gets for emphasis in often quite a turbulent piece of music. There is nothing like that perfect stillness one hits in dance when that rest is synchronised between musician and dancer and the subsequent movement has all the more freshness thanks to that controlled heartbeat.

A pause, presented,
deft as a well thrown ball -
The music resumes.

Check out other poets who are resting at One Single Impression...

It's not Voodoo

It is just a dolly - a princess no less and it is taking me an inordinately long time to do. I sew rather better than I knit but frankly that is not saying much. I am doing this freehand, no book, no pattern, no idea. My mum* would be horrified, however, she is far too busy to be bothered with my efforts right now as I have given her the task of making the dragon.
This is for a story sack, (more info here) a reading initiative for nursery school age. I like making these very much but it is not a small undertaking. I will post up a few more pics as soon as she has hair and a dress. I may be some time with this...feel free to talk amongst yourselves...

*My mum is an excellent toymaker, it is really her finest craft though she is pretty handy at most crafty things and really anything else she has a mind to do.
Among her more bizarre accomplishments is the ability to use handguns and (three decades ago) she taught my sixteen year old brother how to box by the simple expedient of getting a boxing instruction/manual from the library and giving it their best shot as it were. This backfired rather as shortly afterwards she flattened him with a beautifully placed uppercut. She was horrified but her children, including my brother, were inordinately proud of her for that. To meet this softly spoken, diminutive woman is to be completely deceived as to what a powerhouse of energy she really is.

Once more...

Insomnia has me in her gaunt and comfortless arms... I absolutely loathe not being able to sleep for all kinds of reasons but there are unexpected benefits too.

I am sitting here with the window open (despite relentlessly uninspiring weather it is quite stuffy at night.) I can hear the waterfall and the odd car swooshing up the valley but mostly I can smell wood smoke. One of the neighbours is obviously having a late night too and is burning apple wood by the scent of it...it is very pleasant, makes me want to go and toast marshmallows.
What am I saying? There is the rest of July and at least some of August to go before I should feel this autumnal.
Pray for good weather tomorrow...I have to tackle the garden soon - less gardening, more like disrupting the ecology of an environment*.



*no, I don't use any chemicals or other nasties but is more than one way to kill a snail...which reminds me - why don't snails eat Japanese knotweed?

Thank you Mr Dahl

Dishing out the ice cream after tea the other evening, Rose produced this little pearl...

Rose: Mummy. What does willy mean?
Me: Errrr....
Rose: Mummy?
Me: *having recovered my wits* What do you think it means? *I mentally pat myself on the back for that inspired deflection*
Rose: Is it short for William?
Me: *giddy with relief* That's right. *but now I know I have to bite the bullet* and it is also a word for a little boys privates.

Rose looks first shocked (remember, she has no brothers so it is not a word or idea that we have really needed to discuss) and then she looks slightly nauseated. She pauses and then with a faint air of trepidation about her she asks - What does Wonka mean then?

V naturally mishears and has to leave the table and I resolve to rethink the addition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to our bookshelf and DVD collection.

Sunday Scribblings - My Oldest Friend

I have deliberately interpreted the prompt in its most literal sense. I generally fail to hang onto friends for a whole smorgasbord of reasons so I have few friends of very longstanding. So it goes. But for what it is worth my oldest friend was one of the finest in my small collection...

My oldest friend was a lady called May Illingworth. She was ninety when I met her and ninety three when she died. She was a remarkable woman. She was born in 1902 into comfortable circumstances in a mid Glamorgan county town which was surrounded by a countryside untouched by the industrial grime and grinding poverty that marked the Welsh valleys only slightly further to the north. Her father had fought in the Boer war, a fact that brought history amazingly close to me. There I was sharing a cup of tea with a woman whose father had probably been born just after the Crimean War. I felt as though I was in the room with a living breath of the past - she was delighted with my reaction. We became firm friends after that.

She was widowed, as were so many, in the Second World War. Her husband, a major, developed leukemia whilst serving in Italy but before he could be sent home to die a stray shell meant that what was left of him had to be buried quickly just outside Naples. Many years later she travelled to see his grave and brought back a few blades of grass plucked from beside her husband's grave marker. She placed a few in the family bible and gave the other few blades to her son. May and I watched a Remembrance Day service from the Albert Hall one year and they dropped poppies from the cavernous ceiling onto the people congregated below, one for every soldier who died in WWII.
"One of those is for Richard" May said and patted my hand as I cried for her.

She had never wept for her husband, she had not shed a tear for anything since the day she opened the telegram.
"I just couldn't" she said." I just knew that if I started I would never stop and I had the children to look after."

She was a woman free from either sentiment or self pity but sometimes her very lack of these would enable her to do or say something so simply that it would make the most expressive mark on another persons heart.
Hers was a life of unflinching pragmatism spiced with mischief and a pungent sense for the absurdities of life.
She had watched the century unfold from a time where travel was by horse and cart to watching a man set foot on the moon. Not a decade of her life passed without there being war inflicted on some part of the world whether by Kaiser Bill or Pol Pot and though wise in the ways of people and their various motivations, her faith in the basic decency of humanity remained undiminished. I admired her tremendously, she was everything that I felt was good about a person.
When she died I meant to write to her son about what his mother had meant to me. I never did, I could never find the words. I have found them now, too late for him, but they are out there now - I am more than glad I knew her.

Of Hobbies...

Chatting to V over breakfast this morning, sorting out the day, as you do, covering the mundanities, which I will spare you, I asked him what his plans were for this evening when I was in work.
I am going to watch Stargate...while electrocuting myself.

Yes folks, he has taken to electrocuting himself, Bruce Lee did it too apparently. Every man needs a hobby I suppose and at least this does not require a shed.

Talking of hobbies, spinning is still on hold and beading has temporarily lost its pizazz, so I am toying with the idea of scrap booking. Pippa made such a lovely sort of mini-album of her wedding and it made me think that the small things are often the sweetest of all. But papery things and design are not my forte so I am still just thinking about it (and by that I mean I have bought card and glue and I am slowly gathering photos but they are sitting in the old crafting cupboard waiting for the necessary confidence to bounce on the scene).

So instead I am getting into Pilate's. I have a DVD to prove it. Thanks to a combination of protein powder and iron tonic I have my life back to normal energy levels now, but better than that without the caffeine and sugar kicks that kept me in such a vicious tempered circle. So now I have all this energy I am going to use it to trim up a bit and in the spirit of public accountability I will say that I want to get my waist back. It is now 27" - okay, that is not bad, but it is not what it should be considering my general build. It was carrying the twins wot did it but I want to see if I can get it back to what I consider normal for me. If I get there, I will let you know.

To conclude today's jabber I will give you my second favourite muppet, Beaker in a very short demonstration of what fun caffeine really is...

One Single Impression - Through the Window

This is what I have outside my window. July in Wales, being what it is of course, means that right now my lovely view has been obliterated by rain clouds... So the 'ku below is what I see through my window today...

Rain, mist, mountain, green.
Starlings huddle muttering -
Where has Summer gone?

Check out what others are seeing through theirs at One Single Impression

Worth saying...

Today is the first day that I have ever missed anything daughter related because of work. It is Rose's show tonight and I am here at work feeling quite...low. I should be there watching her sing "Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow bow" and I am not. Silly really, I get to be with her most of the time and most of that time we spend driving each other nuts! But I am missing her right now and I think that that is worth saying.

Wordles

This here's a wordle of this blog, using the most frequently used words on the current page



Click on it to see better and then go get your own...go on...you know you want to.

It's quiet...too quiet

Hands up everyone who knows that when the kids go to silent running there is trouble afoot. I have been a mum for eight years, you'd have thought I'd have twigged by now...but no, I was just grateful for a bit of peace after the havoc of cooking and dishing up Sunday lunch (which was a treat by the way, the first taste of chicken in months.*) So I was just letting that and the chocolate pudding settle down with a cup of tea and I did not notice that the girls disappeared until a powerful scent of violets caught my attention and Eden sidled into the room smelling like... well, like violets and a hell of a lot of them.

What have you done?
*innocently* Nothing
Have you made a mess? (stupid question, of course they have)
*even more innocently* No...

and then she smiles at me.
Helen had the face that launched a thousand ships, but they would have all turned round and gone home for the chance to see Eden smile. I am going to finish my cuppa and then go to see what fresh nightmare they have created upstairs. But, at least, it is a sweet smelling nightmare - see, there are silver linings everywhere.

more cat pictures

it says
Well, would you look at that
the paper towels are fighting again


*Either you eat the ones that have been raised in avian hell or you take out a second mortgage. Eight quid for a chicken! I am starting to wonder if I might not keep our hens-to-be for more than just eggs...

I Love Teachers because...

So, I have managed to get Rose's Victorian music hall costume done and it was something of a rush but it looks pretty good I think. Alas I cannot show you a photo yet as they needed it in by yesterday and The Dreaded Mrs Jenkins lifted her eyebrows at me for bringing it late.

She peered inside the bag: black lace top (mine, rather large but still okay) black satin skirt, two petticoats - one soft cotton, the other layers and layers of tulle to make the skirt stick out (I didn't have time to make a hooped petti) a feather boa and a pretty flowered headress. Once more the eyebrows went up...
No corset Mrs Hill?
Sarky mare...

In other news I have picked up a fairy name thanks to Kim whose entertaining and inspirational blog can be found here... Oakmoon.

Your fairy is called Feather Icefrost

She is a bone chilling bringer of justice for the vulnerable.

She lives in high places where the clouds meet the earth.

She is only seen during the first snow of winter.

She wears pale blue like the sky. She has icy blue butterfly wings.

Get your free fairy name here!

Anthropomorphism 101

My husband is a laid back kind of guy - not much upsets him ever, but trashing the MG really ticked him off. Since then I have hardly been able to get near the computer because he has been scouring e bay for replacements.
Well, he has come up trumps again and this one is even more of a beauty. It is funny how sometimes you just take to some people isn't it? You hardly know them but there is something about them that charms. I am that way with cars too. Some have no personality and some do and there is something about this pretty little blue thing just pleases me no end. I have even named her. So jolly days out are just round the corner...if it ever stops raining that is. We have had an evil amount of rain this last week and it is flipping cold too. This country, I love it but it needs a roof in the worst way.

In other news, Rose had her first swimming lesson on Monday. She is having an intensive block
of half hour lessons every day for a fortnight. Within twenty minutes she had paddled her first unsupported backstroke and I narrowly stopped myself from leaping from my seat crowing with pride. I am so delighted I think because I am such a poor swimmer myself. Have you ever seen a cat swim? Their eyes are screwed up, they puff and struggle and it is clear that they cannot wait to get the hell out of this wet stuff. I swim that way too. While V just cuts his way effortlessly through the water, fifty lengths without thinking about it. Swimming is the best exercise they say. I'm going to give Pilates a go.

Crafting has ground to a halt at the moment. It is not the blahs but right now I am preferring reading to anything else and I can't find the moorit shetland so no dog spinning as yet. I'll let you know. Anyway, I have to make a Victorian costume for Rose today. School gave us 48 hours to find a bonnet, shawl, skirt and pinny. The working mothers must be tearing their hair out, I had a funeral to go to yesterday so I have promised Rose that I will deliver costume to the Dreaded Mrs Jenkins by home time today. I love a challenge. Right, I have to go and get my brood ready for school now.
Hope you have a pleasantly busy day to day too.