Slapped in the face and poked in the eye

Round and round in circles; face slapped; reversing; zig-zagging; poked in the eye; bounced around; shaken; wobbling; balancing; thrown round corners; bottom bruising; and sneezing and itchy, running eyes - the clue is in the last part and a is a side effect of what I spent the afternoon doing - all the joys of grass cutting on a small green tractor. And getting too close to the hedge (face slapping and poked in the eye); driving over rabbit holes; attempting unsuccessfully to nudge a football out of the way (oops!); hurrying to finish before it rained; and cutting the grass my way i.e. "a woman's way!"

Why are men so pernickety about things like mowing the lawn? While a man will mentally measure the distances between cut lines, calculate the minimum number of turns required and react furiously if he is disturbed by the phone, children, or having to pick up dog poo, a woman will get the same job done, at the same time as planning the evening meal, mentally writing tomorrows shopping list, noticing which branches of which hedges need to be pruned, designing the garden makeover of her dreams and directing any children that disturb her to put the kettle on, take Four-legged-friend for a walk and run the bath. Okay, she will probably use twice as much petrol, and the job will take longer, but she is multi-tasking and the grass will only look all swirly until the next morning. And who, apart from the man in her life, will notice the bits she missed? And if he wants to go straight out and cut them after he gets home ... that lets her have a longer bath.

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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...

Holiday cake and old friends

Chocolate cake. Most of us who bake probably have a favourite chocolate cake recipe - the one that always works; that forgives being made in a rush or once without eggs (added to the cake tin five minutes after it was initially placed in the oven ... even I didn't think I'd get away with that one); that tolerates the fickle heat of different ovens and different tins and without fail, at first sniff of it baking, brings back delicious memories of old friends and old holidays. And picnics and sand between toes and laughter and blustery walks and holding hands and eating too much and wind in your hair and squinting in the sun and dancing in the rain and dragonflies hitching a ride and castles and hill-tops and freezing cold lochs and a long walk with a black and white cat. This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. Written by the dearest of old friends, on this scrap of paper, over twenty years ago. (Annotated by he who should have known better and me. He was right abo...

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! ...

Walking The Dog

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