Friday 20 August 2010

Bit of this
Warm air blowing in through the windows makes the curtains dance, ruffles my hair and makes me wonder why I don't fling the window wide more often.

Whippet and black cat have been de fleaed , but they seemed to have jumped ship and landed on me. I find the large tin with a yellow lid and take action.

She rings me up and tries to prod me into entering the village produce show. Oh dear I have missed the entry date. I feel absolved.
Bit of that
A Committee is a group of people who individually
can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Bit of this
Yesterday I decided an outing might fan any spark of lingering enthusiasm for life. I didn't give myself time to sink in a tired and despondent heap after walking whippet. I grueled my way around Leamington feeling detached. I kept seeing opportunities but couldn't find the energy to step over the sodding shoulder and engage.

Today for half an hour the pain was managable and I to my utter suppriise I felt 10 years younger. I found a bit of me that I had thought had disappeared for ever. This filled me with hope and carried me through the day.

She has a musical voice and tells us her mother was a professional singer. She is using her own creative talents to run courses in the wonderfully light and airy studio where the sheep peer in and the view magical. The mate and I think self hypnosis might be fun. And I also fancy learning to use the peg loom that was lurking in a corner.
Bit of that
The monkey business illusion a test of perception.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Bit of this
The Ipod has just died, as luck would have it one of my Library books is Ipods for Dummies. The trouble shooting instructions may as well be in Chinese but man about the house translates them perfectly and is rewarded with a tiny apple.

Don't cry now, says the mother to the blond dot in pink. She trails after her 2 brothers sniffing and rubbing her eyes pathetically. Sensing they are all immune to emotional blackmail she shakes her blond head and stamps her foot furiously.

Sometimes I feel alarmingly close to the ground. The first time I experienced this was my college days tripping around Birmingham. At the time I put it down to being enclosed by tall buildings and feeling like a tiny ant. The move to a city was a culture shock to say the least. Every so often the sensation returns, to day I wonder if I have shrunk with age.
Bit of that


Saturday 14 August 2010

Bit of this
"It was thrilling to receive your card" she says. I have never ever thrilled anyone before.

My mother is thrilled with the roses my sister has taken around for her. "They smell divine".

I am thrilled to see an old orange brolly and an old friend. Bring Whippet to play and come for coffee. She is 94 used to make hats and now wants to learn to sculpt. What an inspiration.
Bit of that
She tells me about a creation she once made her daughter to wear at Ascot, on spotting the very same hat in the crowd and making a bee line for her daughter only to find out her daughter had flogged it.
No body wears them better
Her Royal Highness
Ascot 2010


Friday 13 August 2010

Bit of this
Duke the great dane from the pub rushes over and leaps on whippets best friend, an ever-so noble workman leaps from his van and hauls him off.

The was not a drop of blood anywhere.

I remember I have a box of Hero chocks and leave them on his van, specially for the hero of the hour.
Bit of that

Superman.jpg

Thursday 12 August 2010

Bit of this
I feel slightly alarmed to be left in charge of this small grandson of ours.

He is the perfect child, all smiles, and baby talk. We walk across the park to visit a friend.

She opens the door, I am amazed by her transformation, her WD40 injections have given her a respite from disabling rheumatoid arthritis. So much so she has is starting a new job at the young homeless project. We drink tea in the garden to celebrate.
Keep scrolling down the page. There is a beautiful animation about feeling better. This blog is so creative.

Monday 9 August 2010

Bit of this
Varying activity thats the thing. Dog walking, chatting, bits of house work, taking to the sofa with a video about the I O W Women's Institute. Very entraining.

Then the meter man appears half way through said video. I fail to accomplish the required position to read the meter so he is invited in to do the job.

I have to justify my sluttish behavior in the middle of the day and find that he has been sent from heaven, he gives me the number of someone who works magic using cranial massage.
Bit of this
One foot after the other, but perhaps not as fancy as this.

Saturday 7 August 2010

Bit of this
From the dark recess of the cubord a dusty bike carrier appears.

Bikes and carrier are slung on the back of the car.

There are acorns and oak trees, joggers, walkers, bikers, onesis, twosis and groups all enjoying the outdoors. But it is the unexpected call of the lapwing which provides the perfect moment for me. That and the fact I manage to peddle all the way around the reservoir with only the aid of a cool ice lolly.
Bit of that
Until 20 years ago the lapwing was one of the most widespread as well as one of the most colourful of British birds, with its iridescent green back, black and white underparts and long wispy crest. It is a spectacular flyer, tumbling up and down in great vertical swoops to drive off predators such as crows or gulls, or merely in display.

But the past two decades have seen a catastrophic crash in numbers: according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds its British population declined by 52 per cent between 1970 and 1998.

In Wales the decline was 73 per cent between 1987 and 1998, and Devon, where once thousands of lapwings bred, "a pair on every farm", now has only 100 pairs across the whole county.

As well as mountains and marshes, farmland is a major habitat, and, as with the skylark, changes in farming practice are believed to be a main cause of their decline. They have been hit in particular by the dwindling of mixed farming - arable and livestock combined.

Lapwings flourish where both are found together, as the birds like to nest on bare fields of young crops, where they can see predators coming, then take their chicks almost as soon as they are born into pastures, where insect food is more plentiful. But British agriculture is increasingly polarising, with crops grown in the east and livestock raised in the West. This and other changes, such as intensified field drainage, mean that in many places lapwings have disappeared altogether.

Thursday 5 August 2010

Bit of this
The wind and rain have decapitated the heads off the bakers petunia, and they litter the drive like discarded fairy hats.

One of the house martins becomes trapped in the way out, but is gently shooed on it's way.

It catches the corner of my eye and triggers memories. of 2 small children's heads bent together closely peering at the shells and crabs trapped within the lump of resin. Andrews grave becomes it's "good home". If It disappears I say someone will have fallen in love with it too. Or B will object she quips of guardian of church and church yard.
Bit of that
Did you know what made the delicious sound in the sugar plum fairy?. I am ashamed to say I had no idea and worse never even questioned it.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Bit of this
The starling sounds slightly disappointed and miffed as it scolds me from it's breakfast bar that is the bedroom window sill. I hop out of bed and shake nut mix, only to be entertained by a gang of teens squabbling for best peckings. Gawd I hope the noise hasn't woken the neighbors.

She breezes in trailing my grumpy son, and presents me with her smiley one. He has great fun testing his muscles bouncing on a contraption that hangs from the door frame and he spreads good cheer all around.

Man about the house is encouraged on a bike ride. This is quite a novelty these days as the motor bike has taken president over absolutely everything. We manage the hills too.
Bit of that
The first bike I ever had was a much loved second hand red 3 wheeler. I spent hours peddling up and down the path in-front of the church. I later went on to learn to ride a two wheeler job on this bit of path and then ran up and down behind lots of children in latter years helping them perfect their balancing skills. Good friend J arrived at my door a life time latter with her daughters bike, "Here you borrow it for the summer." And that small act of kindness was the relationship with my own adult bike that has beens great therapy for gloomy days and was responsible, in a roundabout way, for the whippet joining the house hold. Who would have thought the act of learning to ride a bike could have rippled so far and wide over time.