..and a week without biscuits or news! Off on a health retreat and hoping for good weather. Wishing you sunny days. x
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..and a week without biscuits or news! Off on a health retreat and hoping for good weather. Wishing you sunny days. x
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..of things. I am always moving my things around. A visitor to the house once said 'little still lifes everywhere!' I am in good company. Matisse, even when ill in bed, would have someone move an item on the manterlpiece one or two centimetres to the right or to the left until he was satisfied with the balance of the arangement. Mostly my arrangements are by design but sometimes they are by happey chance. A friend brought me this seed pod from Malawi and when I opened this page of my current daybook I was struck by how beautiful they looked together. Changing thins often keeps them fresh for me.  Three of these are decades old! I don't like to finish them because they hold such precious memories.  Special nights out, Audrey Hepburn (Interdit was created for her), Penhaligon's Bluebell is spring in a bottle, and Barry loved the smell of frangipani. It reminded him of Africa where he grew up. I don't wear perfume now (so ecpensive for one thing!) but I do love how a smell can transport you to another place or anther time. Sweet peas take me to an Aunt's cottage, dahlias to my father's allotment, orange blossom to the tree in my Cyprus garden. I use unscented products in the house, preferring my scents to come from flowers and fruits, or branches of pine. Writing this I realise how important scents are to me. Are they special for you too? ..of the scent of hyacinth. I wonder what prompts the flower to pump out it's scent. It's not always there. Is it the temperature or the light levels? I have a single hyacinth in a glass beside my bed and woke this morning to a delicious waft of that unique perfume. The timing was beautiful. I think it actually woke me up, and it lasted right through the breathing exercises I do while still in bed - 20 minutes or so, just washing over me, heady, intoxicating. How beautiful was that?  Do you have a favourite floral fragrance?
I am so enjoying teaching this workshop. If you don't live near me and are interested, perhaps I could travel to you (you kow I love to travel). If you can fit a few people round your table, or if your WI group or book group would find it interesting... Let me know in the comments and I will get in touch by email. My two goals for the experimental session of the workshop at home recently were to find out a) if the author's claim that the process could be done in three hours was correct (that's Jinny Ditzler Your Best Year Yet) and b) whether with my impaired vision I could still teach/lead a group. I am happy to say the answer to both appears to be Yes! To me, teaching is about sharing and I love to share my interests and enthusiasms and to teach things I believe in eg that everyone can learn to draw, and that you can create a beautiful thoughtfully designed garden without spending thousands. I do believe that if we make plans and set goals the good things are much more likely to happen. Looking down the stairwell of the Burgh Hall Dunoon. I rreally admire the restoration/conversion of this 150 year old building. Read about how it was bought by the community for £1 under About Us. An ideal venue for my workshop today.  I got a Christmas card in the post today! Thank you Eleanor if you are reading this.  ..but I am not sure that the boids lile the stylish new bird feeder. They are not using it much althouogh it has been in place since Tuesday... ..  I am doing another Your Best Year Yet workshop on Satuday 8th in Dunoon. Would love to see you there! ..in the big wide world, the more effort I put in to make my small conrner of it gently ordered. The more shouty the world, the more calm I become. The more uncertain, the more I am looking at the certainties - spring will come, the sun will set, the moon will rise, the robins will nest, I will have to decide what to make for dinner. The uglier events become, the more I look for the beauty and kindness - both easy to find all around me thankfully if I just take note. All this feels like a mild act of rebellion, or defiance! I go through phases of following current affairs intensively, seeking out reliaable information and intelligent comment, but sometimes for a spell I listen only to the headlines to know if the killing has stopped. If it hasn't, I switch off. Just need to stay sane enough to help the helpers, which is the best I can think to do right now. It's not much, but it's not nothing. Fishertown in Nairn consists of tiny cottages down narrow lanes all in a huddle. They were clearly not designed for cars, wheelie bins and our predeliction for 'stuff'. I like it for the absteact compositions I find of gable ends, windows, angles and shadows.     Although it is a conservation area there are ugly extensions on most cottages and some of the small gardens have two or even three sheds. Understandable but chrmless though in summer much of it is pretty with flowers and climbing plants.  I really loved my face to face February. Do you have anyone you really want to spend face to face time with? Can you organise it? It is a different and perhaps more meaningful and rewarding experience than screen time, wonderful though that can be. Make it happen! ..and four straight days of sunshine in the fine little town of Nairn in the Scottish Highlands. Lots of interesting details on the late 19C municipal buildings if you look up in the High Street.     The spring flowers are up..  but so are the Christmas decorations!
I met face to face my two sisters, a niece and her husband, a nephew and my brother-in-law and for the first time three lovely great-nieces. I had only seen them on screens before. Walks through the town and on one of the lovely beaches, delicious meals, coonversations and laughter. Wonderful. On my recent trip to the city I visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery, coinciding with an organ recital which soumds amazing in this great space.   But inspired by the book Thunderclap by Laura Cummings I wanted to revisit the good collection of Dutch painitngs in the gallery. This is one of my favourites. Neither the artist or the sitter is known. It is titled Portrait of a Girl aged 15 and was painted by a followe of Nicolaes Eliasz in 1633. Such skill! I always visit her and wonder about her life.   Off for my face to face getogether with my sisters... I shopped yesterday for all the ngredients, I prettied up the kitchen and cleaned all the worktops, filled a basin with hot soapy water and put out a fresh tea towel, and opened the recipe book at.. Sardine and Lemon Pate..  and at the very moment of taking this photograph the electricity went off. Yet another power cut (yet more wild weather).
This one lasted only a few hours, not a few days! I namaged to make the pate, two plum crumbles and a large pot of Moroccan Mince. The coffee and walnut cake will have to wait till tomorrow - I am too tired tonight. I an sttruck by the extreme contrast between my last two posts! The humble tiny robin which whispers so sweetly when I feed it in the morning quiet, and the almost overwhelmimg drama and volume of Scottish Opera in full flow and with full orchestra in the gilded Theatre Royal in Glasgow. (I mistakenly posted the Welsh Opera video.) Variety being the spice of life, I am lucky to experience both. Face to face February includes live music. Short blog break while I go to the Opera..  Forgive me if I am sounding rather pleased with myself. I actually enjoyed my cooking day, and may even do it again. I made a large pot of corn chowder and had some for lunch.  I then baked a Belgian fruit loaf, washing up as I went..  then tested it, while still wrm - the butter is melting. Delicious.  I next made a big pot of Caribbean Chicken  cleaned the kitchen back to my starting point,  and had some for dinner.
Lots for the freezer. :-) ..cooking! Unusual for me. I can cook, but don't partiularly enjoy it. However I do like good food and the freezer needs restocking after the four day power cut. My very small, slightly shabby kitchen (it really needs some money spent on it) was not very inviting so I spent half an hour clearing and cleaning all the worktops and prettying it up a bit so that it was a place I wanted to be in. Taking inspiration from the yellow plums I found some cards and flowers and put on some music and the linen apron, a gift from a friend which somehow makes me feel likke a real cook.     All ready to go.. ..means extra trips to the city to meet friends for lunches and concerts. Weather is very very cold but sunny -so far so good!  Another way I still enjoy my books is to put a 'coffee table' book on this side cupboard (don't happen to have a coffee table) and turn a page every morning for a week or two. This book has stunningly beautiful photographs of our world. A positive way to start the day.   Most of the books of this type that I have were bought for very little in remainder book shops. Do you have any books that would serve this purpose? ..and all the beauty in our world. Happy Valentine's Day.  Thank you Mary in Washington DC for this gorgeous photograph! I once had a book called Women Who Read Are Dangerous! I love my dangerous women friends and our book group has been going for many years.
Each year we try to read as well as current novels, a biography or autobiography, a classic, a historical novel, something in translation, a crime novel, a work of non-fiction which can be a travel writer, something by a Scottish author (although we are not all Scottish). At summer and Christmas lunches we have short readings on an agreed topic. Do you belong to a book group? I love mu book group |
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