Losing your cool; the need for time travel

Exactly how much can you lose in one morning and still get yourself plus children to school without completely losing your cool?

Shoes? - where you left them, scattered across the hall floor; tights? - no idea, scribble name on new pair, and resolve to excavate down to the bottom of the wash-basket, later; school bag? - somewhere, under the kitchen table? (grit teeth, cool definitely beginning to trickle away) - no, in your bedroom? - no, what's that in your bed?; cello? - in the car already, miraculous!; water bottle? - don't know, and losing ability to care. Ah okay, we'd better find it then, if you'll get a minus point for not having it - try the fridge. Yes! (warming up again); piano music? - have you tried the piano?; coat, tennis racket, car keys? Find the keys - in the car with the cello - tennis racket half way up the stairs and coat no where to be found. Child sulks and cries most of the way to school, then finds the coat beneath a pile of bags in the foot-well of the car. Cool seeping out, but not lost.

Bags, coats, instruments, rackets, little sticky hands and lead stumble toward the school gate, mother as pack-horse, shepherd ... and guardian of the steaming pile of poo that dog has just deposited on the pavement. Mother drops everything and frantically starts to dig in her pockets - poo bags? Forgotten. Cool? Well and truly lost. If only she could wind back time ...

Actually, only the earlier part of that story was me (and is me most mornings, but more stressed on the days I also have to get to work - cool very precariously held onto on those days); the frantic mother on the pavement dropping everything was observed yesterday. And I resolved never, ever to add Four-legged-friend to our morning routine.

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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...

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 ...

Heaven clearly can't wait. Ranting and screaming inside. Growing old and lecturing ... myself, mostly.

What follows should come with a warning - it is a preachy rant. Stop now if you're not in the mood for a lecture. Or, if you're into procrasti-reading, read on and (hopefully) enjoy my latest piece of procrasti-writing. Apologies too for the reference to elderly leakages. And farts. And now, for being deeply irreverent. Sorry. Heaven can't wait. Meatloaf was wrong. Clearly the 'band of Angels' is impatiently putting together a gig. There's a party happening which we haven't been invited to. Yet. What a terrible year 2016 has been, so far. And we are barely dipping our winter-wrapped toes into Spring. Is it that the roll-call of those summoned to a higher place grows ever more poignant as we age? Prince was but a few years older than me. Victoria Wood, a meaningless number of years older still. Meaningless because what does age mean astride the long plateau of middle age before the eventual slide into decrepitude? A few years here, a few there - we...

Walking The Dog

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