Cold feet and girlie socks

Look at your feet.

Fill in the blanks - my feet are ..., they feel ..., they look ...

... knobbly, svelt, plumptious, furry, hairy, bald, smooth, flaking, dry, sweaty, clean, dirty, stinking, warm, like ice-blocks, socked, naked, pink, white, blue, black (see a doctor), numb, tickle-y, pins and needles-y, beautiful, sexy, hobbit-y, cloven ... etc

Mine are cold.

A day of shopping, providing a taxi service to Littlest, gardening and sitting at my desk has (and probably, predominantly, the latter occupation is to blame) resulted in freezing toes, white skin and a tingle where the bunion is just beginning to say it's chilly down here.

It's not helped by the nakedness, due to tardiness in the dressing activity after post-gardening ablutions earlier - um, just pausing to assess that image ... no I'm not shivering in the altogether at my desk - that would be weird in January. Weird any month of the year. No, the tardiness was due to utter disdain for the choice of socks in the sock drawer. Not only do us gals have to pay more for our toiletries, but our expensive fashion socks are a pathetic apology for foot attire - thin, run to holes faster than pastry would were we to en-croute our feet, barely stretch above the knobbly bits of our ankles and shrink even if hand-washed. Who hand-washes their socks? - me. After too many mornings trying to squeeze my feet into tiny, scratchy, vaguely tube-shaped mats of knotted, sharply cutting, toe-nail snagging threads, masquerading as the socks that fitted yesterday but ain't going to fit today. Men on the other hand have thick, durable, plush socks which cocoon their feet in a thermal, swaddling blanket of woolly extravagance. Okay, so they might be a little or indeed totally unfashionable, but my feet wouldn't care.

I'm off to find some man socks ...

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!

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here - in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast. Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog