A bit of grump

The main thing that people in Britain are talking about at the moment is the weather, which has been dire since the beginning of the year. Not especially cold - in fact, it's been relatively mild compared to winters when I was young. We've barely had any frost, let alone snow. But it's been damp and grey and depressing - not that I suffer from depression, but even I have found it a bit gloomy. Hence the photo of one of the few patches of blue sky that we've seen. Down south in England, there have been quite serious floods. Here, it's just been dank, with drizzle - very much not gardening weather. I think I've done four short lots of tidying up outside this year, and the garden is very much in need of more. But it's been chilly or raining or both; not tempting. It was faintly sunny yesterday for a bit, and I got out there and did some weeding, but then it rained - not hard, but enough to be discouraging - and I came in again. 

How lovely to find out about Virginia - thank you so much for replying! And also Maureen, who doesn't appear to have a blog when I click on her name in the comments, but who actually does. 

Nothing has been happening here apart from some more cutting out of shirt. And quite a bit of socialising, which is nice but not newsworthy. Although on Saturday I met up with a former student, someone from - maybe twenty or more? - years ago. I must have taught thousands of students in my time. We had 10 or 11 different classes every year, some of them for only 13-week semesters, but some - like the one this student was in - for most of the academic year. She was studying Higher English with the aim of qualifying for going to college to become a primary, ie junior school, teacher. She was at the time a classroom assistant in primary, and felt she was doing much the same work as a teacher for half the pay. I think that she probably wasn't, in that the teacher has to do all the planning and, I assume, most of the marking, and also has much of the responsibility. 

However, this youngish woman was divorced, with two children, and I admired her attitude. Anyway, when the class was over she was keen to keep in touch, which was slightly odd, since she must have known that I had lots and lots of students and couldn't possibly keep up with even a fraction of them. We met for coffee a few times and I rather hoped that it would all die a death. She was nice enough but ... you know. I have friends. When she did qualify as a teacher, she was busy - and at the time, so was I, with work and with the offspring still at home - so the years passed, but she continued to send me Christmas cards, latterly with her mobile phone number and the suggestion that we should meet again. Eventually, I caved in and sent her mine, and we met up. She's still perfectly nice, but she told me everything that had happened in her (somewhat chequered) teaching career from beginning to end, without ever pausing, from 10.30 till 11.45. I was exhausted just nodding and saying, "Oh dear" and "How difficult" and "Well, that was good". After that we had another cup of coffee and there was a bit of a conversation. At the end of our meeting, she said, "We should do this again." Hmm. Not very soon!

There's a lot of winter Olympics on television at the moment. I'm not remotely interested, but am intrigued by the introductory music on the BBC, which is the "Dies Irae" from the Mozart Requiem. "The Day of Wrath" - why? I'm mildly irritated by sport, but not that much... .

Right. Better do something more useful. Have a nice week, Virginia, Maureen, Margaret, Jabblog and anyone else reading this.

Have to keep busy...

Things are quietish around here. I've spent this afternoon happily and brainlessly sewing together strips of shirt for Mr Life's quilt - much easier than making stars. (The squares at the bottom do have four stripes, but the fourth, plain blue one, merges with the blue background.) Other than that, there's been a bit of socialising, a book group (that's mainly socialising too, though we do discuss the book...) and various walks. 

We still can't reliably get out of the street in the car.

For example, this was the entrance to our driveway this morning. 

However, fortunately there are plenty of buses. 

I'm sitting listening to Mozart's Vespers as I write this, since this is one of the pieces that one of my choirs is singing in May. It's always disappointing that doing this doesn't implant the music in one's brain as well as one would hope. It all sounds extremely familiar as one types away, but it's actually much better to follow along with the score. One of the other pieces we're doing is Britten's St Nicolas. I'm not a huge fan of Britten, especially the movement in this in which there's a famine and some boys are kidnapped and pickled (urgh!) for food. Nicolas rescues them in the nick of time, but still. As a squeamish vegetarian, I don't enjoy this movement. I've sung it before, but not for years, though I did remember about the pickled boys (trauma!). The piece does have some jolly bits with great shouty choruses from the men during storm scenes and so on. 

I wish that the kind people who comment on my blog all had blogs themselves. Looking at you, Virginia and Maureen! Then I would know more about them. Still, why do I have a blog? I'm just a bit compulsive in some respects. I do Duolingo in French, German and Scottish Gaelic (not making huge progress with the latter; I should really look up the grammar, which is not at all like that of any other language that I've studied). I somehow fall for the mustn't-lose-my-"streak" thing and can't bear to break it. No reason, really - but it's an incentive to keep going, even though the streak couldn't really matter less. Which reminds me... better do today's session. 

 

Casting off

 

We've lived in our current house for 37 years. The street we live in is very small - only 5 houses - and in all the years we've lived here, the road has never been resurfaced. Until now. 

Very exciting. 

Luckily we haven't needed to get our car out in the last few days, and tomorrow we're going up town in the bus, so that's all right. We do usually go to the supermarket on Thursdays, though. Hmm. We'll see. 

It's not really been gardening weather - cold and dank - so I've been getting on with making star patches out of Mr L's old shirts for his quilt. This is not how they'll be arranged. There are 9 because I wasn't concentrating - I only need 8, I think. Stars are a bit of a fiddle; the other patches will be less so, I hope. 

We have snowdrops and crocuses in the garden - not fully out crocuses, but they're showing colour. I'm eager to get the spring tidy done. On the other hand, it's chilly - not frosty, but not tempting. Playing with old shirts is more fun. 

I always wanted to make a quilt (a quilt - and I'm now on my 27th!) but never had time before I retired from teaching and indeed till after my mum died because she was then ill and needed looking after. My lovely mum was a chilly (not in personality, Margaret! - just in temperature) person and I now wish that I'd been able to make her a quilt to sit under in her pink chair. She'd have been impressed, too - not that my quilts are impressive, but she was my mum. She died 13 and a half years ago and I miss her a lot.