He-revision, she-revision, needs parental supervision

Easter holidays - what an oxymoron. Yes to Easter, but absolutely NO! to holiday. At least, not in a household containing teenagers. Note - that containment is fairly elastic at times. Times when they need to break-out - using the get-out-of-jail-(fairly, bar the petrol)-free card to visit girlfriend and girlfriend's kind parents who provide copious quantities of food for starving teenager, previously nourished only by a diet of German and Music revision.

Having one stressed teenager is bad enough. Stir in a second teenager, opposite sex, opposite hormones, opposite views on most things, also revising for public exams; Littlest being driven by pocket money bribery to play the piano for at least 10 minutes every day; parents who have to work to pay the bills; the odd bit of major surgery; Four-legged-friend with a thorn in his foot; a house that refuses to clean and tidy itself; weeds that think the neglected garden belongs to them; ditto an explosion of spring bunnies and the holiday part of Easter Holidays begins to look like a rather sick joke.

Until Jamie Oliver saves the day. Chocolate and raspberry brownies - heavenly scent wafting peace throughout the house. Smiles.

Note to self - make more tomorrow. Or truthfully, persuade daughter to make more tomorrow. And the next day. And the next ...

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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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