Skip to main content

Recipe for a roaring success

Ingredients:

1 adult, woken by usual canine "We're hungry and our bladders are full!" alarm. At 6.40am. On a Sunday.

Several hours pre-Christmas, of back-strain-inducing labour in the garden, moving felled hedge and fallen tree

1 bowl of porridge. Dried blueberries.

1 apple

1 flask of coffee

2 over-excited "Are you taking us for a walk?" dogs

1 Sunday Times newspaper (last week's - the three headline words Vicky, Pryce and Trial, innocently lacking their new running mate, Farce. Hah! Spluttering isn't a sign of old age, is it?)

1 pair of wish-I-could-wear-them-all-the-time Muck boots (Sigh - definitely a sign of ageing - not in the senile I-want-to-splash-in-puddles-because-I-think-I'm-a-little-girl way, but due to the ... arthritis!!! ... in my toes and because Muck boots have memory foam soles and they're all cushiony and walking-on-cloudsy. Oh dear, now I do sound like a senile little girl!)

1 day when the wind is in a SSE direction which means we can be considerate to the neighbours

1 match



Method

Drink coffee

Give apple core to dogs

Rip up newspaper - puzzle dogs who recall me telling them not to do this. If they could read that it is not today's - the one that I rescued from the front-door, before they helped themselves to a bit of shredding practice - they might understand. But they're dogs ... so they joined in my shredding game.

Pile up some dry twigs into a wigwam shape

Push shredded newspaper into base of pile of twigs

Strike match, light paper and step back



Then, remember the need for a fire-break and spend a frantic few minutes clearing one so that the now Blazing Bonfire Number One doesn't leap the divide and begat Bonfire Number Two. Then, spend an anxious morning wondering of the gap is big enough.

Run indoors to collect phone - in case of emergencies and for calling-up cups of coffee and for photos - rapidly ordered back outside by Littlest. She was clutching her nose and pulling her jumper up over her face so I'm not certain what she said, but it was something along the lines of  "Ooh dink, Bummy!"

Try not to barbeque Bertie Baggins or Four-legged-friend



Several hours later - mid-contemplation of how to reduce my massively inflated carbon footprint, smoke in hair, up nose, in coffee (cold), and definitely 'dinking' and definitely fed-up inhaling ash - head indoors; procrastinate for eleven hours and finally write blog.



Procrastination is the enemy of writing.

Procrastination is also the enemy of music practice - in my case, it's procrastination tinged with embarrassment (I'm not ready for a public performance ... of all the notes that I still don't know, strung together in a faltering flow that refuses to resemble what I imagine playing in my head. In Littlest's case, it's a procrastination that walks hand in hand with a song - many songs, and hums, and general musical vocalisations that pertain to music practice, but involve little practice of scales and arpeggios.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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!

Tut, Tut, soggy feet again

"Tut, Tut, looks like rain." Tut, Tut probably isn't the first thing that springs to mind when viewing this picture. And faced with bleak weather and a sad-looking symbol of national pride it is unlikely that many would consider a small bear  a personage of sufficient gravitas to quote. However, Walking the Dog was in Scotland ( was rather than is, because was there last week without internet). And Walking the Dog likes Pooh. That sort of Pooh - the sort with an 'h' at the end. A. A. Milne had a lot to say about the weather. He gave Eeyore my favourite weather-related observation , "The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually." And last Thursday, it did stop. Long enough for Littlest and I to walk to our pooh-sticks bridge. Long enough for us to get half way there, along the grassy path. Long enough for us to chat to the cows (we had to shout as they stubbornly stayed at the distant end of the fie