The kindness of friends

What did I say last week about hating the pre-holiday rush to get jobs done - all those things we have put off doing for months, that suddenly have to be done by the deadline of the holiday departure date? Actual HDD was today - as intended, pre visitation from fire-services, in the middle of the night last week and lovely men in reflector jackets who put out the blaze in our roof:

A fire is quite a humbling experience - first there is the loss of control; the nagging worry that you failed to remain calm in a crisis; the realisation that you had all your priorities wrong - the importance of holiday planning, possessions, organisation, all evaporate in a puff of smoke and all that is left is family and the fact that everyone, including four legged friend is safe; then, there is the reaction of wonderful friends, who come in the dead of night to rescue the littler, frightened members of the family and whisk them away to somewhere warm for hot chocolate and cuddles, then feed us and house the one of us who was too scared to come home; and friends, who through phone texts and face-book, express their love and concern; and friends who spend an evening helping to sort water-damaged books, clothes and toys; and friends - our builders - who go beyond the call of builderly duty, to sweep, fix the imense hole in the roof, replace ceilings and plaster, all within a week - quite astonishing, and, in case you thought it, not at all due to a sense of guilt, as the fire had nothing to do with their being here.

Where once their was a ceiling ...

And then there's the daughter who fails her driving test two days later, through lack of concentration at a roundabout - What were we thinking? Why didn't we cancel? Of course she wasn't going to stand a fair chance of passing? Not after the pyrotechnics and its aftermath of sleeplessness and frenetic activity at home? Instead of frustration and disappointment, she got a lot of sympathy, more cuddles and a quick rebooking of a new test date.

HDD now rescheduled for later this week - after visit from electricians, and compilation of inventory of destroyed and damaged furniture, bedding, clothes, toys (big Tiggrrr saturated and sitting rather forlornly on soaked sofa in skip), cameras, CDs and DVDs, music manuscripts etc etc etc ... The tidy up goes on and on ... and I procrastinate, trying to put it off when I've had enough ... or when I have decided that the ironing I must do before the new HDD, can come on holiday with us and either be ironed there, or create an 'ensemble' (... going to France after all!) of fashionably crumpled attire.

Friends - thank you.

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog