Last weekend the kids and I went down to Margaret River (Gracetown to be exact) for a surfing "safari" with a group of mums from school.
The weather wasn't exactly great but we still managed to go for a swim on Satuday and a quick surf on Sunday (in very washed out and windy conditions).
We also saw two big groups (pods) of whales (mothers with babies I think) in the Gracetown bay - they seemed to be having a lovely time leaping out the water and flicking their tales as they moved southwards towards Antartica.
The kids all slept in a tent in our friends' yard. It poured with rain overnight - but luckily our new tent held out and everyone stayed dry and happy.
I spoke to Mum yesterday and she said they had been having alot of rain in Albany - I think she said six inches in one night - which sounds like an awful lot - not sure of the metric equivalent. Apparently her carport filled with water - but the house stayed dry. She also said quite a few shops' ceilings had collapsed due to the rain - and presumably leaky roofs.
Mum also said Julian was in Sydney this week at a conference or course(not sure what it is on) - so prehaps he will call in and see Zena. You never know...
26 November 2008
24 November 2008
Life far too exciting to keep up with. And its just gone far too chilly and wintry.
Tonight: heading into British Museum friends evening, to see their new blockbuster 'Babylon' exhibition. This morning: swam 76 lengths in 60 mins, so jolly pleased and feeling fit (how many does Bella do?).
This weekend: Friends of Bruce Castle 'Sunday Lunch' (cold baked salmon, trifle, lots of other food) with a talk about a chap called Edward Marshall, who carved an elaborate 17th Century family memorial in All Hallows Church just across the road from Bruce Castle: smooth polished marble head and shoulders of the two parents in neck ruffs, their ten children kneeling in a neat row underneath, surrounded by pillars, urns and other embellishments. Apparently Ed Marshall was one of about seven stone masons working in London during that period, and the only one whose memorial sculptures survived the Civil War -- and what a lot of them our lecturer showed us.
Must close down and toddle off to BM... Toodle-oo
Tonight: heading into British Museum friends evening, to see their new blockbuster 'Babylon' exhibition. This morning: swam 76 lengths in 60 mins, so jolly pleased and feeling fit (how many does Bella do?).
This weekend: Friends of Bruce Castle 'Sunday Lunch' (cold baked salmon, trifle, lots of other food) with a talk about a chap called Edward Marshall, who carved an elaborate 17th Century family memorial in All Hallows Church just across the road from Bruce Castle: smooth polished marble head and shoulders of the two parents in neck ruffs, their ten children kneeling in a neat row underneath, surrounded by pillars, urns and other embellishments. Apparently Ed Marshall was one of about seven stone masons working in London during that period, and the only one whose memorial sculptures survived the Civil War -- and what a lot of them our lecturer showed us.
Must close down and toddle off to BM... Toodle-oo
17 November 2008
Evil eye, and other malfunctions
Came back from allotment on Saturday, sat on bed for a leisurely cuppa, read and recover before getting dinner, while JN blasted out The Darkness' 'One Way Ticket to Hell and Back' downstairs. One of my eyes felt a bit funny -- and when I looked at a mirror, it was a bit puffy. By the time we finished dinner, the skin above my left eye was definitely swollen up. Maybe something had blown into it down the allotment -- though I hadn't noticed anything? Or perhaps it was reacting to the olive foot cream we brought back from Crete, which would have been on my hands just before I noticed the puffiness? Anyway, fingers crossed it would sort itself out overnight.
No. Sunday, I woke up in the dark and could feel that all around my eye was now swollen, so much I could barely see out. In the bathroom mirror, it looked like a shiny ball had taken over where my eye used to be, and if it inflated much more it might burst. Better try calling a doctor, I thought; time felt like middle of the night but my watch called it 5am. There's now an NHS Direct phone line here, so I called that: terribly nice lady took details, and said that a doctor could call me back but in about 7 hours. So I tried my own doctor's surgery number, which gave a night cover phone number: one of their duty doctors called back within about 10 minutes, and gave me an appointment at the new Laurels Health Centre just the other side of our allotments, opposite St Anns Hospital at 9am. I hauled a v. grumpy and reluctant Joseph along with me, just in case. Just one other person in the waiting room when we arrived so hauled out our stock of reading matter -- we had a good half hour wait anyway -- I suspect the doctors have a list of phone patients to talk to in between those who turn up in person. I couldn't find my glasses, so reading New Scientist was an arms' length squint. Nice young Indian doc listened, said that it was indeed a strong allergic reaction, checked there were no signs of inflammation or infection, dished me out a pack of steroid tablets and a prescription for antihistamines (when the local Tesco opened at 11am) and waved us off. Back home, I couldn't find my glasses...
So after breakfast with steroids (6 dissolved in water, once a day), off I set with my one working eye and swollen puffball I couldn't see out of, re-tracing our steps down to West Green Rd, then along to Tesco to collect the anti-histamines, then back to re-tracing the early morning track. Thank goodness they'd been handed into the receptionist -- must have fallen out of my bag when I first reached in for the magazines. So back home, to take my 1 antihistamine tab once a day, and wait for signs of the swelling going down. By dinner-time, it still seemed no less swollen, and I reckoned I could feel more swelling underway. So I phoned the night-docs again, about 21.30hrs: Older Indian doc told me I should go to nearest hospital Casualty, which he said was St Anns; this time JN made no demural about escorting me. Chap at St Anns gate said 'No casualty here', it's just a mental hospital these days, with a local campaign fighting against plans to close it down. So I headed for The Laurels again; again, one other pair in the waiting room. Very tired-looking receptionist called the night-doc HQ, to get them to put me on her appointments system for the duty doc there to see. Nice lady doc duly checked eye for inflammation etc, and said that the steroids take 24 hrs to kick in and start reducing the allergic reaction. We had missed asking the original doc this vital question about how long it would take for the treatment to work -- and he should have thought to explain. The nice lady also recommended using cool-pack or ice-bag on the swelling, and sleeping with head elevated, so fluid drains from the swelling rather than pooling there. 'So do you feel healthy in yourself?' she asked, as a sort of final general check. 'Good thing I am,' I answered, 'with all this tramping through the cold to get to a health service -- really wouldn't be doing a sick person any good at all.'
This morning, Monday: eye now opens, and has a definite eyelid instead of a puffy ball. Still looks pretty horribly disgusting -- but only about a third the size it was yesterday. So the drugs are working; I'll werk at home tomorrow, rather than go in to the office and frighten the horses, but fingers crossed feel able to show up for meetings in Peterborough on Weds and rest of the week.
After several years getting by without troubling the health service at all, I seem to be having a spate of breaking down: have had reading glasses for small print for a few years now -- but this visit, the optician recommended varifocals and I've found that trees have regained miraculous depths of dynamic detail instead of being just green (or at this season, gold) bulk. Optician also recommended I see my GP and get a blood test: cholesterol far higher than it should be, so no more starting the day on an egg, I reckon. JN has just made himself his first GP appointment for years to get himself blood-tested. Then we need to see dietician, to clarify just how much or little of what we can eat.
Then there's the weird toe-nails, which were definitely doing their best to become ingrowing. Eventually, one of them showed signs of infection starting up -- so I hobbled off to ask a couple of likely neighbours about local chiropodists, and fixed up the see the one who shows up two days a week at a pharmacy just around the corner on Philip Lane. He delicately cut out a strip down the side of the offending toe, removed a deep corn (which I'd been trying to treat as a verruca, so relief that it was not), and produced a whirring electric file to file down the rest of my weird pedal claws back into proper toenails.
But I mustn't go swimming for a couple of weeks until the no-longer-ingrown toenail healed over. And now I can't go swimming until my eye has gone down. Waah. Next thing you know I'll be breaking down again for lack of exercise. Apart from that, though, I'm just fine.
No. Sunday, I woke up in the dark and could feel that all around my eye was now swollen, so much I could barely see out. In the bathroom mirror, it looked like a shiny ball had taken over where my eye used to be, and if it inflated much more it might burst. Better try calling a doctor, I thought; time felt like middle of the night but my watch called it 5am. There's now an NHS Direct phone line here, so I called that: terribly nice lady took details, and said that a doctor could call me back but in about 7 hours. So I tried my own doctor's surgery number, which gave a night cover phone number: one of their duty doctors called back within about 10 minutes, and gave me an appointment at the new Laurels Health Centre just the other side of our allotments, opposite St Anns Hospital at 9am. I hauled a v. grumpy and reluctant Joseph along with me, just in case. Just one other person in the waiting room when we arrived so hauled out our stock of reading matter -- we had a good half hour wait anyway -- I suspect the doctors have a list of phone patients to talk to in between those who turn up in person. I couldn't find my glasses, so reading New Scientist was an arms' length squint. Nice young Indian doc listened, said that it was indeed a strong allergic reaction, checked there were no signs of inflammation or infection, dished me out a pack of steroid tablets and a prescription for antihistamines (when the local Tesco opened at 11am) and waved us off. Back home, I couldn't find my glasses...
So after breakfast with steroids (6 dissolved in water, once a day), off I set with my one working eye and swollen puffball I couldn't see out of, re-tracing our steps down to West Green Rd, then along to Tesco to collect the anti-histamines, then back to re-tracing the early morning track. Thank goodness they'd been handed into the receptionist -- must have fallen out of my bag when I first reached in for the magazines. So back home, to take my 1 antihistamine tab once a day, and wait for signs of the swelling going down. By dinner-time, it still seemed no less swollen, and I reckoned I could feel more swelling underway. So I phoned the night-docs again, about 21.30hrs: Older Indian doc told me I should go to nearest hospital Casualty, which he said was St Anns; this time JN made no demural about escorting me. Chap at St Anns gate said 'No casualty here', it's just a mental hospital these days, with a local campaign fighting against plans to close it down. So I headed for The Laurels again; again, one other pair in the waiting room. Very tired-looking receptionist called the night-doc HQ, to get them to put me on her appointments system for the duty doc there to see. Nice lady doc duly checked eye for inflammation etc, and said that the steroids take 24 hrs to kick in and start reducing the allergic reaction. We had missed asking the original doc this vital question about how long it would take for the treatment to work -- and he should have thought to explain. The nice lady also recommended using cool-pack or ice-bag on the swelling, and sleeping with head elevated, so fluid drains from the swelling rather than pooling there. 'So do you feel healthy in yourself?' she asked, as a sort of final general check. 'Good thing I am,' I answered, 'with all this tramping through the cold to get to a health service -- really wouldn't be doing a sick person any good at all.'
This morning, Monday: eye now opens, and has a definite eyelid instead of a puffy ball. Still looks pretty horribly disgusting -- but only about a third the size it was yesterday. So the drugs are working; I'll werk at home tomorrow, rather than go in to the office and frighten the horses, but fingers crossed feel able to show up for meetings in Peterborough on Weds and rest of the week.
After several years getting by without troubling the health service at all, I seem to be having a spate of breaking down: have had reading glasses for small print for a few years now -- but this visit, the optician recommended varifocals and I've found that trees have regained miraculous depths of dynamic detail instead of being just green (or at this season, gold) bulk. Optician also recommended I see my GP and get a blood test: cholesterol far higher than it should be, so no more starting the day on an egg, I reckon. JN has just made himself his first GP appointment for years to get himself blood-tested. Then we need to see dietician, to clarify just how much or little of what we can eat.
Then there's the weird toe-nails, which were definitely doing their best to become ingrowing. Eventually, one of them showed signs of infection starting up -- so I hobbled off to ask a couple of likely neighbours about local chiropodists, and fixed up the see the one who shows up two days a week at a pharmacy just around the corner on Philip Lane. He delicately cut out a strip down the side of the offending toe, removed a deep corn (which I'd been trying to treat as a verruca, so relief that it was not), and produced a whirring electric file to file down the rest of my weird pedal claws back into proper toenails.
But I mustn't go swimming for a couple of weeks until the no-longer-ingrown toenail healed over. And now I can't go swimming until my eye has gone down. Waah. Next thing you know I'll be breaking down again for lack of exercise. Apart from that, though, I'm just fine.
Time travels by
Now on the phone to geek sister with oomph to get me blogging. Went to the Blue Mountains with Pete and his work colleagues (they had completed a planning session) we peered and ate on the weekend. The kids stayed with Auntie Lisa and Ellie and then had a night with Grandpa and Gran. On Sunday after dance rehersals and catch up late lunch our whole family was tired out and ready for holiday. Oh well 2 weeks to go for Holly!
Builders are sanding, hammering and cutting wood, you can't be lonely here, they arrive on the dot of 7am and leave as the kids get back from school. Slowly a kitchen is evolving and the walls looking elegant dressed in their timber lining.
Builders are sanding, hammering and cutting wood, you can't be lonely here, they arrive on the dot of 7am and leave as the kids get back from school. Slowly a kitchen is evolving and the walls looking elegant dressed in their timber lining.
Dangerous camping at Dwellingup
We are just back from a weekend camping in Dwellingup so I have a pile of muddy washing to do and have just about managed to transfer all the camping paraphernalia from the car to its proper place.
I say "we" went camping - but it was really just Bella, Connor and I. Hamish and Mark stayed in Perth so Mark could recover from his trip to Dubai last week and Hamish could play cricket.
We went with about 10 other families with children in the same year as Connor. So there was a big noisy group of us.
Lots of swimming in the river pools, getting muddy, looking for insects, climbing trees, catching tadpoles and sitting around the fire trying to avoid the smoke.
Unfortunately the weekend was marred at the end as one of the little girls (about 5 years old) fell over backwards into one of the other campers' fires and burnt her hand badly (she is in hospital now and will have to probably have skin grafts). The fire was left unattended with just the coals glowing - I don't think the children realised there was a fire there and we didn't realise there was a fireplace in the area they were playing in. It was just one of those awful things that can happen even when everyone is being careful. Luckily there were two doctors and a nurse amongst our group so she was in good hands early on. PMH (Princess Margaret (children's) Hospital) also has one of the best burns units in the world. So if it was going to have to happen ... you could almost say it was lucky it happened then and in WA.
Onto a cheerier subject...
I mentioned Mark was in Dubai last week (he came back at 4am Saturday) - he is in NZ now (left Sunday at midnight). He is doing some work with a waste recycling technology company - so will be touring the rubbish dumps in Christchurch - should be fun.
Today Connor and Bella are starting swimming lessons at school everyday for two weeks and this weekend Bella, Connor and I (possibly Mark and Hamish but not sure yet) are going to Gracetown (Margaret River) for a weekend with Bella's surfing buddies. We have our fingers crossed for good weather.
I say "we" went camping - but it was really just Bella, Connor and I. Hamish and Mark stayed in Perth so Mark could recover from his trip to Dubai last week and Hamish could play cricket.
We went with about 10 other families with children in the same year as Connor. So there was a big noisy group of us.
Lots of swimming in the river pools, getting muddy, looking for insects, climbing trees, catching tadpoles and sitting around the fire trying to avoid the smoke.
Unfortunately the weekend was marred at the end as one of the little girls (about 5 years old) fell over backwards into one of the other campers' fires and burnt her hand badly (she is in hospital now and will have to probably have skin grafts). The fire was left unattended with just the coals glowing - I don't think the children realised there was a fire there and we didn't realise there was a fireplace in the area they were playing in. It was just one of those awful things that can happen even when everyone is being careful. Luckily there were two doctors and a nurse amongst our group so she was in good hands early on. PMH (Princess Margaret (children's) Hospital) also has one of the best burns units in the world. So if it was going to have to happen ... you could almost say it was lucky it happened then and in WA.
Onto a cheerier subject...
I mentioned Mark was in Dubai last week (he came back at 4am Saturday) - he is in NZ now (left Sunday at midnight). He is doing some work with a waste recycling technology company - so will be touring the rubbish dumps in Christchurch - should be fun.
Today Connor and Bella are starting swimming lessons at school everyday for two weeks and this weekend Bella, Connor and I (possibly Mark and Hamish but not sure yet) are going to Gracetown (Margaret River) for a weekend with Bella's surfing buddies. We have our fingers crossed for good weather.
15 November 2008
Goldcrest in Garden
1) Most exciting thing this week: we had a goldcrest in the back garden! I was doing a work phone call at home, in my comfy swivel chair by my study window, watching the usual bunch of sparrows, chaffinches, blue and great tits popping into the bird feedery on the apple trees, enjoying a spot of sun while it lasted. Furtive flitting through the creepers along the back fence -- a little round warm-brown wren with cocked-up tail (much shorter than Aussie fairy wrens). That's exciting enough -- we only get very occasional wren visits, and only during the winter. I was vaguely wondering if we might possibly get a pair of wrens together some time, when there was another tiny brown flitter along the fence. But it didn't seem quite the warm wren-brown, and there seemed pale markings. So I reached for the binocs -- and there was a distinct yellow stripe on its head. The bird book showed it was more likely to be a goldcrest than a firecrest -- either is officially Britain's smallest bird, by a whisker from the wren.
We haven't had the goldfinches visiting their special nyger seed feeder for some time now, but we do have robin, blackbird and starling back as our regular winter visitors.
2) We are celebrating our wedding anniversary by having a long weekend, and playing extra Scrabble after dinner at nights. We were thinking of going to Oxford, but the museums we wanted to visit there are both closed for re-building/renovations. We think we probably ought to throw some sort of party, what with this being our 25th/silver etc. May get around to it, but just at the moment it all seems a bit too much exertion...
3) Permaculture design day down at Picketts Lock on the Lea last weekend, a Council planning forum for re-development at the Old Town Hall just across the railway line the other night, demonstration at the new Civic Centre about the Wards Corner campaign on Monday, planning meeting for a Seed Swap I'm running in Feb on Tuesday, residents association AGM on Thursday...
We haven't had the goldfinches visiting their special nyger seed feeder for some time now, but we do have robin, blackbird and starling back as our regular winter visitors.
2) We are celebrating our wedding anniversary by having a long weekend, and playing extra Scrabble after dinner at nights. We were thinking of going to Oxford, but the museums we wanted to visit there are both closed for re-building/renovations. We think we probably ought to throw some sort of party, what with this being our 25th/silver etc. May get around to it, but just at the moment it all seems a bit too much exertion...
3) Permaculture design day down at Picketts Lock on the Lea last weekend, a Council planning forum for re-development at the Old Town Hall just across the railway line the other night, demonstration at the new Civic Centre about the Wards Corner campaign on Monday, planning meeting for a Seed Swap I'm running in Feb on Tuesday, residents association AGM on Thursday...
12 November 2008
Message to Zena
If you're having trouble working this thing, try composing messages and comments offline using a simple text editor such as Notepad, then pasting them into the box before posting them, rather than typing directly into the box.
If, after that, you still can't see your messages or comments, then the problem clearly lies with your browser settings, which may be blocking sites such as this. In which case, you will need to either go through the settings yourself (under "Tools" or "Options" or similar, depending on which browser you're using) or call in next door's ten-year-old geek, who will no doubt regard you as having just fallen out of the Ark but will find and fix the issues in no time.
If, after that, you still can't see your messages or comments, then the problem clearly lies with your browser settings, which may be blocking sites such as this. In which case, you will need to either go through the settings yourself (under "Tools" or "Options" or similar, depending on which browser you're using) or call in next door's ten-year-old geek, who will no doubt regard you as having just fallen out of the Ark but will find and fix the issues in no time.
11 November 2008
Blast from the Past
Just had a phone call from Leanne Fleay (her mum used to teach swimming each year) who is organising a school reunion for our year from Kojonup.
I haven't spoken to her since year 9 - quite a few years ago now. The reunion is in February - but I am not sure if I will go yet. I'll have to speak to Jude Owen and see if she is going!
I haven't spoken to her since year 9 - quite a few years ago now. The reunion is in February - but I am not sure if I will go yet. I'll have to speak to Jude Owen and see if she is going!
03 November 2008
Now what have we been up to lately? ...
Now where was I up to last time? That's right the school holidays...
We spent the last week of the October holidays in Albany chatting to Mum, seeing the familiar local sights and catching up with friends.
- We spent a day at Two-People's Bay - Bella went horse riding but the boys and I just walked on the Beach.
- We climbed Bluff Knoll and looked at the Stirling Ranges. The kids asked: "So why exactly are we doing this?" Connor made it 99% of the way to the top (about 3km of steep, rocky path and steps) - but, with the top just in sight and 100m away, he sat down and utterly refused to go another step further. I had used up all my treats, promting and promises a long way down the Moutain so I just sat next to him and decided to call that spot the "new top of the mountain"!
(Photos above.)
Mum was well, chatty and very busy (as usual) with group commitments, projects and walking Bindi every day.
The only negative for the trip was when poor little Tara was attacked by a Pitt Bull-looking dog in our back yard while Hamish was jumping on the trampoline. The kids were understandably freaked out. Poor Tara is still walking with a limp now (nearly four weeks later). It'll be interesting to see how she reacts next time we pull up in front of the Albany house - she may not want to get out of the car!
We didn't get a chance to catch up with Julian. We called in on the way back - but he wasn't in.
Then back to Perth and school once more.
Hamish is now busy with cricket training, cricket on Sundays and cricket practise in between whenever he can fit it in. So far Hamish's score for the season is 99 not out (they have to retired after 20 runs each game) - so he is very pleased with himself. He is currently reading Bryce Courtney's "The Power of One" and is enjoying the dubious language and the underlying theme of setting your goal and striving to reach it.
Bella is into swimming squad. Her best friend Stella is a gun swimmer and Bella is aiming to catch up with her so they can swim in the same squad level. As Stella is swimming about 2km for training already (and is the youngest swimmer in the club's history to get promoted to her current "bronze cap" level), Bella will have to do a lot of swimming to catch up with her. (Hamish is doing squad too - but very reluctantly).
Bella's birthday was last Friday and we gave her a hand-reared Weero (or Cockatiel - which is a little parrot - smaller than a Galah but bigger than a Budgie) called Nelson. He is very sweet and sits on her shoulder while she reads and plays the piano each morning. Bella is reading "Little House on the Prairie" - she is up to the first book (they are just building their log cabin) and is loving the story so far.
Connor's current passions are riding his bike, hunting for butterflies and eating as many lollies as we will let him have. He is very jealous of Bella's bird and thinks he should have been given something alive for his birthday too. I keep mentioning the worm farm we gave him (one of those narrow ones between two pieces of perspex so you can see what the worms are doing - or rather what they have done as you put the soil in with little marker layers of coloured sand in between so you can see the worms mix it up) - but he doesn't think this really counts as he had to catch the worms himself!
Mark has been home most of the last month, with perhaps just the one trip to Melbourne, but is off to Dubai next week (I think). He is coaching Hamish's cricket team this year - which Hamish is enjoying immensely.
Me? I have just been doing the same old round of domestic chores, exercise and social outings. No work at the moment as the rolling market research contract we had for a number of years has just finished and I am not keen on seeking out any more agricultural economics work. My latest plan is to do a Grad. Dip. Ed. over the next two years through Murdoch University in Primary Teaching and see what happens with this.
Now we are up to date once more...
We spent the last week of the October holidays in Albany chatting to Mum, seeing the familiar local sights and catching up with friends.
- We spent a day at Two-People's Bay - Bella went horse riding but the boys and I just walked on the Beach.
- We climbed Bluff Knoll and looked at the Stirling Ranges. The kids asked: "So why exactly are we doing this?" Connor made it 99% of the way to the top (about 3km of steep, rocky path and steps) - but, with the top just in sight and 100m away, he sat down and utterly refused to go another step further. I had used up all my treats, promting and promises a long way down the Moutain so I just sat next to him and decided to call that spot the "new top of the mountain"!
(Photos above.)
Mum was well, chatty and very busy (as usual) with group commitments, projects and walking Bindi every day.
The only negative for the trip was when poor little Tara was attacked by a Pitt Bull-looking dog in our back yard while Hamish was jumping on the trampoline. The kids were understandably freaked out. Poor Tara is still walking with a limp now (nearly four weeks later). It'll be interesting to see how she reacts next time we pull up in front of the Albany house - she may not want to get out of the car!
We didn't get a chance to catch up with Julian. We called in on the way back - but he wasn't in.
Then back to Perth and school once more.
Hamish is now busy with cricket training, cricket on Sundays and cricket practise in between whenever he can fit it in. So far Hamish's score for the season is 99 not out (they have to retired after 20 runs each game) - so he is very pleased with himself. He is currently reading Bryce Courtney's "The Power of One" and is enjoying the dubious language and the underlying theme of setting your goal and striving to reach it.
Bella is into swimming squad. Her best friend Stella is a gun swimmer and Bella is aiming to catch up with her so they can swim in the same squad level. As Stella is swimming about 2km for training already (and is the youngest swimmer in the club's history to get promoted to her current "bronze cap" level), Bella will have to do a lot of swimming to catch up with her. (Hamish is doing squad too - but very reluctantly).
Bella's birthday was last Friday and we gave her a hand-reared Weero (or Cockatiel - which is a little parrot - smaller than a Galah but bigger than a Budgie) called Nelson. He is very sweet and sits on her shoulder while she reads and plays the piano each morning. Bella is reading "Little House on the Prairie" - she is up to the first book (they are just building their log cabin) and is loving the story so far.
Connor's current passions are riding his bike, hunting for butterflies and eating as many lollies as we will let him have. He is very jealous of Bella's bird and thinks he should have been given something alive for his birthday too. I keep mentioning the worm farm we gave him (one of those narrow ones between two pieces of perspex so you can see what the worms are doing - or rather what they have done as you put the soil in with little marker layers of coloured sand in between so you can see the worms mix it up) - but he doesn't think this really counts as he had to catch the worms himself!
Mark has been home most of the last month, with perhaps just the one trip to Melbourne, but is off to Dubai next week (I think). He is coaching Hamish's cricket team this year - which Hamish is enjoying immensely.
Me? I have just been doing the same old round of domestic chores, exercise and social outings. No work at the moment as the rolling market research contract we had for a number of years has just finished and I am not keen on seeking out any more agricultural economics work. My latest plan is to do a Grad. Dip. Ed. over the next two years through Murdoch University in Primary Teaching and see what happens with this.
Now we are up to date once more...
02 November 2008
By way of a Coda to the Collpase of the Bathroom Ceiling....
....here's a photograph of the new mosaic splashback to the bathroom basin, as manufactured by Judith.
And to accompany it, here's a photograph of Judith, computerating away in bed on this Sunday morning.
I must now go and make a (very) late breakfast - scrambled eggs with the medley of wild mushrooms we bought from the Stoke Newington Farmers' Market yesterday. Yum yum!
Chilly....
Bitter cold spell - polar north east winds and rain, with snow in London a few days ago. Inside our nicely-insulated house stays equable, with central heating purring into action every now and then -- but no cold striking in through the walls. Last night we hauled down the big brown winter blanket for our bed, and this morning I woke up nicely warm instead of slightly chilled (but just as reluctant to leap out of my cocoon). We have the central heating on both thermostat and timer, so at night it will only fire if the temperature goes down to about 12C, then it wakes up just before the alarm goes at 6am.
Yesterday, we stayed inside the house. JN painted upstairs hall wall, so our picture gallery can be re-displayed without intrusive blobs where blu-tak was. I planted up three window boxes with spring bulbs (layers of tulips, daffs, winter iris) topped with pansies (Karma Blue, Amber Kiss, Ocean Mix) I grew from seed, operating from one of those handy plastic 'potting station' trays on kitchen table, with forays outside. Despite the cold, snails were still crawling about, as was a small frog I found sitting on the front doorstep when I took out one of the finished window boxes. They have to go out the front, as the squirrels that frequent the back garden treat bulbs as tucker.
Last week, I lunched twice at the St James Park cafe by the lake: glorious sunshine on the autumn trees. I'd made the dates expecting the cafe to be pretty deserted, not reckoning on the clear (though cold) spell coinciding with half-term, which brought the crowds back to the park.
Yesterday, we stayed inside the house. JN painted upstairs hall wall, so our picture gallery can be re-displayed without intrusive blobs where blu-tak was. I planted up three window boxes with spring bulbs (layers of tulips, daffs, winter iris) topped with pansies (Karma Blue, Amber Kiss, Ocean Mix) I grew from seed, operating from one of those handy plastic 'potting station' trays on kitchen table, with forays outside. Despite the cold, snails were still crawling about, as was a small frog I found sitting on the front doorstep when I took out one of the finished window boxes. They have to go out the front, as the squirrels that frequent the back garden treat bulbs as tucker.
Last week, I lunched twice at the St James Park cafe by the lake: glorious sunshine on the autumn trees. I'd made the dates expecting the cafe to be pretty deserted, not reckoning on the clear (though cold) spell coinciding with half-term, which brought the crowds back to the park.
26 October 2008
Roman, aquatic, seedy, feral feet, verbal scoring, statuephilia
This week's highlights - apart from the general joy of having the week off werk:
1 Roman: Last Saturday, to Colchester (as JN has already blogged): the first Roman capital of their province of Britannia, before Boudicca (Boadicea) set it aflame. Time Team programmes showing excavations along the city wall, and of the hippodrome race-track alerted us to History Stuff there, as had glimpses of castle from taxi rides when I visited our local office there. So we boarded train at Liverpool St to tick the city off our 'must go see' list. At Colchester main station, we changed to a waiting (new?) Colchester Town shuttle train, just by the impressive ruins of St Botolph's Priory (C12); info boards there told us that St Botolph was a patron saint of travellers, whose churches generally stood outside city gates (as with London's St Botolph's), and that the name was usually a sign of Saxon foundation. The walking tour copied from Ramblers Association magazine took us around a stretch of Roman city wall, used as the boundary to a vast car park, to the river (low tide, lots of lovely mud) and a half-timbered Siege House with Civil War musket holes marked out by red metal rings, beside a grand Mill being sold off in apartments as one of many new residential developments -- Colchester, like Stevenage, is first stop out of London on the fast trains so an inviting commute. Shame about the City crash, and all those potential high-paying buyers brought low. Up East Hill, lined with dinky half-timbered, Georgian and Regency frontages -- but the amount of noisy speeding traffic still allowed through all this picturesque heritage came as a nasty shock, which shows how much we now expect old towns to be either traffic-free or traffic-calmed. Up to Colchester Castle, which signs claimed to be the largest Norman keep built in England, built on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius. The museum inside has, not surprisingly, an impressive Roman collection, particularly mosaics. We also caught a 'Guardians of theEmperor' exhibition, of Chinese miniature terracotta army figures from one of the later imperial tombs. On, past the ancient
St Helen's Church, now an Armenian Orthodox icon-adorned parish, and past the 'Jumbo' iron water tower, to the Balkerne Gate -- which says it's the only surviving Roman gateway in Britain (since Lincoln's was demolished by a passing lorry). Hole in the Wall pub beside it, and another long stretch of Roman city wall running along downhill from it. And after that, we trickled along the shopping streets, gathering loot. I make a point of checking out charity shops, on the grounds that what's bought from them is virtuous recycling in aid of a good cause, not self-indulgent consumerism. Joseph dived into a games shop and acquired a Scrabble set.
2 Verbal scoring: So evenings, we've been playing Scrabble during breaks in the telly-viewing schedule. JN plays it one lunchtime a week at werk, and now he gets to practice on me at home too, with the aid of the Scrabble Dictionary he has also acquired. We also have the Compact OED, with magnifying glass -- 12 vol dictionary reduced to two vols, plus another volume Addendum, to which we can appeal when the Scrabble dicker fails to acknowledge a word that one of us is sure has legitimate existence. I'm not much into games, but do enjoy the competitive pedantry of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. So far, we're neck and neck -- or I may be just ahead on points and the luck of the draw. We're pretty equal on the low cunning of hitting the high-scoring squares. JN keeps score
3 Statuephilia: To the British Museum Thursday evening, to see the golden and contorted Kate Moss, as illustrated in all the press coverage, meeting JN there when he finished werk. Greeted by a miniature Angel of the North, dominating the main entrance lobby a mere 20 or so feet tall with 40 foot wings (or 7m and 14m): JN managed to walk in past it without actually noticing it, intent on tracking me down where I was sketching in the Egyptian gallery (a sphinx and giant scarab). We toured the five Statuephilia displays. Moss among classical Greek marbles, nicely juxtaposed with the crouching Lely Venus, the surface sheen of her golden skin and undies finely textured. Ron Mueck's giant self-portrait head contrasting in colour and form with the similarly gigantic Easter island figure at whose standing feet it lies on its side. In the press photos, it looked pretty pointless, but when you stand by it, the detail of chin stubble, eyelashes, lined and wrinkled skin textures, and the pull of gravity on the soft tissues of mouth, chin and cheeks all seem touching -- human weaknesses, contrasting with the sternly stylised stone god above. Facing the entrance of the Enlightenment Gallery, the tall glass-fronted C18 display shelves are given over to Damien Hirst: an array of identical plastic human skulls, all splashed with vivid enamel paints. A reflection on museums as collectors of death, of course. But the Egyptian Gallery 'Dark Stuff' installation struck me as a cleverer way of making that point: two pikes with what seemed a random mass of stuff spiked on their points, casting the shadows of two human heads on the wall behind them; when you look at the stuff, you see it is made up of the mummified bodies of cats, rats, mice, birds, squirrel, insects, snailshells... If I were the museum, I'd want to keep all of them except the Hirst -- or perhaps move the Hirst to the Wellcome Gallery of health and death, alongside the equally gaudy Mexican 'Night of the Dead' display.
4 Aquatic: the birds have come back to the swimming pool roof -- showing that it's now chilly enough for the warmth rising from the pool to attract them to stand on the glass panels above. So backstroke now enlivened by watching the permutations of their (mostly) one-legged silhouettes. So far, mainly the white shapes of seagulls -- pigeons presumably less sissy about temperature. Four swims this week, mostly 50 lengths/40 mins but Friday I made it to 70 lengths/60 mins.
5 Feral feet: But I'm ordered off swimming for the next week at least, and have to shower with my right foot in a plastic bag. My feet have been going weird for some years now: toenails more like claws, and lately, big toenails curving into a shape that illustrates what 'ingrowing' means. Last week, the right big toenail reacted to me being put into snug-fitting stylish boots for a whole day by cutting into its groove, which this week developed into infection. So I found a local chiropodist (Thu and Sat at the pharmacy around the corner), and yesterday found out what chiropodists do. As a consequence, I now have a right foot impressively swathed in surgical dressings: all toenails cut back and filed down by a whirring electric burr; the ingrowing strip cut right out from along the side of the right toenail, and a deep corn identified and cut out. All without pain, and leaving me able to walk away quite normally. Most impressed by the feral-foot taming: good value for £30/session.
6 Seediness: a while back, I decided I could cope with organising a local Seed Swap Day next spring: 22 Feb 09, at Bruce Castle. I got the borough-wide Allotments Forum, and Sustainable Haringey Food group to back it, and the Council to book the venue. This week, I've done something about it: checked with Hazel at Bruce Castle about space, basic layout, and options for running refreshments; and yesterday dashed off e-mails setting up a planning meeting with the Food Group and allotments people. And even managed to put info up on the web at www.sevensisterspermaculture.wikispaces.com
7. Party last night, flung by local artist and organisers of Friends of Tottenham Marshes, who live, we discovered, in the shadow of Spurs stadium. This afternoon, Friends of Bruce Castle AGM: JN is resigning as newsletter editor (after umpty years) but will stay on the committee; I am being hauled along as quorum fodder, and will take hyperbolic coral crocheting to get on with.
1 Roman: Last Saturday, to Colchester (as JN has already blogged): the first Roman capital of their province of Britannia, before Boudicca (Boadicea) set it aflame. Time Team programmes showing excavations along the city wall, and of the hippodrome race-track alerted us to History Stuff there, as had glimpses of castle from taxi rides when I visited our local office there. So we boarded train at Liverpool St to tick the city off our 'must go see' list. At Colchester main station, we changed to a waiting (new?) Colchester Town shuttle train, just by the impressive ruins of St Botolph's Priory (C12); info boards there told us that St Botolph was a patron saint of travellers, whose churches generally stood outside city gates (as with London's St Botolph's), and that the name was usually a sign of Saxon foundation. The walking tour copied from Ramblers Association magazine took us around a stretch of Roman city wall, used as the boundary to a vast car park, to the river (low tide, lots of lovely mud) and a half-timbered Siege House with Civil War musket holes marked out by red metal rings, beside a grand Mill being sold off in apartments as one of many new residential developments -- Colchester, like Stevenage, is first stop out of London on the fast trains so an inviting commute. Shame about the City crash, and all those potential high-paying buyers brought low. Up East Hill, lined with dinky half-timbered, Georgian and Regency frontages -- but the amount of noisy speeding traffic still allowed through all this picturesque heritage came as a nasty shock, which shows how much we now expect old towns to be either traffic-free or traffic-calmed. Up to Colchester Castle, which signs claimed to be the largest Norman keep built in England, built on the foundations of the Roman Temple of Claudius. The museum inside has, not surprisingly, an impressive Roman collection, particularly mosaics. We also caught a 'Guardians of theEmperor' exhibition, of Chinese miniature terracotta army figures from one of the later imperial tombs. On, past the ancient
St Helen's Church, now an Armenian Orthodox icon-adorned parish, and past the 'Jumbo' iron water tower, to the Balkerne Gate -- which says it's the only surviving Roman gateway in Britain (since Lincoln's was demolished by a passing lorry). Hole in the Wall pub beside it, and another long stretch of Roman city wall running along downhill from it. And after that, we trickled along the shopping streets, gathering loot. I make a point of checking out charity shops, on the grounds that what's bought from them is virtuous recycling in aid of a good cause, not self-indulgent consumerism. Joseph dived into a games shop and acquired a Scrabble set.
2 Verbal scoring: So evenings, we've been playing Scrabble during breaks in the telly-viewing schedule. JN plays it one lunchtime a week at werk, and now he gets to practice on me at home too, with the aid of the Scrabble Dictionary he has also acquired. We also have the Compact OED, with magnifying glass -- 12 vol dictionary reduced to two vols, plus another volume Addendum, to which we can appeal when the Scrabble dicker fails to acknowledge a word that one of us is sure has legitimate existence. I'm not much into games, but do enjoy the competitive pedantry of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. So far, we're neck and neck -- or I may be just ahead on points and the luck of the draw. We're pretty equal on the low cunning of hitting the high-scoring squares. JN keeps score
3 Statuephilia: To the British Museum Thursday evening, to see the golden and contorted Kate Moss, as illustrated in all the press coverage, meeting JN there when he finished werk. Greeted by a miniature Angel of the North, dominating the main entrance lobby a mere 20 or so feet tall with 40 foot wings (or 7m and 14m): JN managed to walk in past it without actually noticing it, intent on tracking me down where I was sketching in the Egyptian gallery (a sphinx and giant scarab). We toured the five Statuephilia displays. Moss among classical Greek marbles, nicely juxtaposed with the crouching Lely Venus, the surface sheen of her golden skin and undies finely textured. Ron Mueck's giant self-portrait head contrasting in colour and form with the similarly gigantic Easter island figure at whose standing feet it lies on its side. In the press photos, it looked pretty pointless, but when you stand by it, the detail of chin stubble, eyelashes, lined and wrinkled skin textures, and the pull of gravity on the soft tissues of mouth, chin and cheeks all seem touching -- human weaknesses, contrasting with the sternly stylised stone god above. Facing the entrance of the Enlightenment Gallery, the tall glass-fronted C18 display shelves are given over to Damien Hirst: an array of identical plastic human skulls, all splashed with vivid enamel paints. A reflection on museums as collectors of death, of course. But the Egyptian Gallery 'Dark Stuff' installation struck me as a cleverer way of making that point: two pikes with what seemed a random mass of stuff spiked on their points, casting the shadows of two human heads on the wall behind them; when you look at the stuff, you see it is made up of the mummified bodies of cats, rats, mice, birds, squirrel, insects, snailshells... If I were the museum, I'd want to keep all of them except the Hirst -- or perhaps move the Hirst to the Wellcome Gallery of health and death, alongside the equally gaudy Mexican 'Night of the Dead' display.
4 Aquatic: the birds have come back to the swimming pool roof -- showing that it's now chilly enough for the warmth rising from the pool to attract them to stand on the glass panels above. So backstroke now enlivened by watching the permutations of their (mostly) one-legged silhouettes. So far, mainly the white shapes of seagulls -- pigeons presumably less sissy about temperature. Four swims this week, mostly 50 lengths/40 mins but Friday I made it to 70 lengths/60 mins.
5 Feral feet: But I'm ordered off swimming for the next week at least, and have to shower with my right foot in a plastic bag. My feet have been going weird for some years now: toenails more like claws, and lately, big toenails curving into a shape that illustrates what 'ingrowing' means. Last week, the right big toenail reacted to me being put into snug-fitting stylish boots for a whole day by cutting into its groove, which this week developed into infection. So I found a local chiropodist (Thu and Sat at the pharmacy around the corner), and yesterday found out what chiropodists do. As a consequence, I now have a right foot impressively swathed in surgical dressings: all toenails cut back and filed down by a whirring electric burr; the ingrowing strip cut right out from along the side of the right toenail, and a deep corn identified and cut out. All without pain, and leaving me able to walk away quite normally. Most impressed by the feral-foot taming: good value for £30/session.
6 Seediness: a while back, I decided I could cope with organising a local Seed Swap Day next spring: 22 Feb 09, at Bruce Castle. I got the borough-wide Allotments Forum, and Sustainable Haringey Food group to back it, and the Council to book the venue. This week, I've done something about it: checked with Hazel at Bruce Castle about space, basic layout, and options for running refreshments; and yesterday dashed off e-mails setting up a planning meeting with the Food Group and allotments people. And even managed to put info up on the web at www.sevensisterspermaculture.wikispaces.com
7. Party last night, flung by local artist and organisers of Friends of Tottenham Marshes, who live, we discovered, in the shadow of Spurs stadium. This afternoon, Friends of Bruce Castle AGM: JN is resigning as newsletter editor (after umpty years) but will stay on the committee; I am being hauled along as quorum fodder, and will take hyperbolic coral crocheting to get on with.
20 October 2008
Colchester
Thwarted by bad weather two weekends ago, we had to abandon our planned visit to Colchester, first capital of Roman Britain (where, that weekend, some Roman re-enactments had been planned -- but which would probably have had to be drastically scaled down, so perhaps we didn't miss much). This Saturday just past, the weather was much better -- the forecast promised a pale overcast typical of the English autumn, but instead we had near cloudless skies for much of the day, following a walking tour (published by the Ramblers Association in their quarterly magazine "Walk") around the most historic bits of the town, with a long detour into Colchester Castle Museum for an inspection of their extensive Roman collections. (The Castle Museum is in fact a roofed-over Norman keep, the largest ever constructed in Britain by William's conquerors and the model for the Tower of London's White Tower.) And a temporary exhibition, of which we knew naught until we read a brochure on the train to Colchester, of terracotta figurines from the royal tombs at Xuzhou, capital of China's Western Han dynasty from 206 BCE to 8 CE. (Apparently, Essex is twinned with the PRC's Jiangsu Province -- who knew?) This unfortunately meant that we had to skip Hollytrees Museum of Local History, and -- running short of time before our train back to London -- failed to locate the extravagant early Tudor gatehouse to St John's Abbey (all that's left of the Abbey) just south of the town's Roman/medieval/Civil War walls, but never mind: Colchester has a Roman re-enactment on the first weekend of every October, so in twelve months' time we might be back there to examine what we missed on this visit. (Including the guided tour of the Castle which visits parts of it not otherwise open to the public, such as the Roman foundations of the Temple to the Emperor Claudius, destroyed in the Boudiccan Revolt in 60 CE.) In the meantime, enjoy this selection of photographs -- of the Castle Museum, of Judith at the Balkerne Gate (the main entrance to the town in the Roman period, which is thought to have begun life as a triumphal arch to the Claudian invasion before its destruction in the Boudiccan Revolt), St Botolph's Priory -- the first Augustinian monastery in England -- and the Saxon tower of Holy Trinity Church, both constructed of reused Roman bricks and tiles, and the historic holes in Siege House caused by the musket balls of the Royalist troops on 5 July 1648 as they attempted to break through the ring of Parliamentarians who were besieging the town. A strange siege, considering that the town actually supported the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, and the Royalists had been allowed to billet themselves there on the understanding that they would move on after just one night....
12 October 2008
You Can't Trust These Judiths
I was standing on the roof of the narrowboat as it forged upstream towards the M25 beyond Picketts Lock, spreading my arms wide, doing my king-of-the-world impersonation, urging Judith to take a photograph of me; and she did. Or she thought she did. Or her camera told her she did. But when we got home this afternoon from our boat trip up the River Lee (or Lea) we found that in fact no such photograph had been taken. Had the camera baulked at the shortness of my skirt? The daredevilness of my balancing on the roof having ingested so much wine? Or had The Wugster basically effed up with the picture taking?
Detailed explanation must surely await another time. Until that time, here are a couple of rather duller pictures of our time on the water this afternoon. (It's the second weekend of October! It's warmer than it was in August! Kick it for me one time, dude!)
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