It's been a while...

A bit like tidying up the garden shed, the longer you leave it the harder it is to just get started... And so too, I discover, with blogs.

The spring flowers have all faded and gone, leaving behind some interesting seed heads, or yellowing leaves.

The blossom has bloomed and fallen, and now there's the promise of apples, pears and plums in the autumn.

Nests have been built, and baby birds raised, and tadpoles have kept me entertained with their antics in the 'more successful than I realised' pond - there are little froglets in there now, some with both back and front legs.

Bees have been buzzing around for a couple of months now, and the Californian poppies have popped their hats and are dazzling everyone in the front garden.

There have been 'fun runs' and birthdays and, at the end of April, my aunt sent me her wedding dress - the 'something borrowed' for my mother's own wedding, on a snowy Boxing day in 1947. 

My niece, wearing her grandmother's wedding dress.

Christmas past...

On Monday, we headed off to friends for a few drinks and Christmassy nibbles - they have the sort of properly characterful house that looks perfect all togged out with tree and tinsel.

Stockings round the fireplace.

Even the lamp got in on the act!

On Christmas Eve, we did the usual last minute shopping,  put the presents under our tree, and the Drookit neighbours came round for yet more festive cheer - you can never have too much of that!

Our new Christmas Day tradition is to go to the pub for a lunch time drink - it gets us out of the house for a little while even if the weather is too horrible for a decent walk and, since it's only open from noon until 2pm, it's short and sweet before everyone heads home to start cooking Christmas dinner.

...and you never know who you'll bump into!

It seemed that every dog around town (and these are only a few) sported some sort of festive neck wear!

Boxing Day, and Mr Drookit went off to pick up the Gorgeous Girl to bring her here for a few days - the joy of going on the back of the motorbike might have been slightly tarnished for her, as they got home utterly frozen. Wood burner glowing, and a blanket wrapped around her, helped thaw her out!

One particular Christmas gift helped her work up a sweat later... Sadly, I wasn't quite so good, but Mr Drookit was completely hopeless!

Friday had us entertaining family with a makeshift lunch (the carrot sticks and cucumber disappeared in double quick time - I think everyone was feeling a bit overloaded with carbs!) and then some games. Bananagram is good fun, except when Mr Drookit is playing - he beats everyone, and it all gets a bit mad and frantic! Still, a good end to the week. Even if we all got thoroughly trounced!

Victoria, and Albert...

The Victoria and Albert museum in London is possibly my favourite museum. It has such a diverse and extensive collection of all sorts of things, from ceramics to carpets, diamonds to dresses. There is a field nearby and, if I could, I'd love to transport the whole place here, just for my enjoyment. Too greedy?

On Friday I headed into London to meet up with my niece - just back from the Himalayas, where she has been volunteering as a doctor (so pleased for her - she had a wonderful time!) and to see the Masterpieces of Chinese Painting exhibition at the V&A. We ended up spending the whole afternoon there, beginning with lunch with a friend, and then afternoon tea, and then more tea later in the Friends' room - well, we had a lot of catching up to do.

The Chinese exhibition was a little disappointing - the figures so stylized that they became a bit repetitive. Once in a while, however, there would be something amusing, or exceptionally beautiful. There was a long scroll depicting Nine Dragons, which looked like a storyboard for a Pixar film - the dragons sending mischievous (to my eyes) sideways glances as they flew around (the link for the exhibition has a lovely animation of dragons, if you click on the main banner at the top). Another silk scroll of Prosperous Suzhou, which showed a whole town in minute and exquisite detail, and that took the artists three years to complete, really needed hours of scrutiny through a magnifying glass to admire the rigging on the boats, the buildings, the hundreds of people, or the millimetre high birds and animals. Just beautiful...

Later, after more tea, we headed off to see the Club to Catwalk exhibition, of clothes from the 1980s. Of course, as a new art school graduate back then, and living in London, this is exactly how I looked... Uh. Not.

 

Of course we had a few folk around that made the effort, but with not much money, and not having a lycra body, I'm afraid it was jeans, tee shirts, and baggy checked shirts all the way for me...

There are a few items of clothing that I wish I'd held on to, tho', like the bright blue jumpsuit, and the pink, over-sized, Boy George-style cotton coat. Not to wear them, but as relics of a bygone age - and I know a few young things who might have enjoyed trying them on!

The art school fashion shows (straddling the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s) were always fun - I particularly remember a dress made entirely of looped rubber bands, for instance. The best dress ever, tho', was one based on this style of dress from the mid-18thC, but with extraordinarily wide panniers.

The model slowly sidled on (for what seemed an age) until the dress filled the entire width of the stage. No hope of turning, or advancing down the catwalk - all she could do was take a bow (to uproarious applause) and then sidle off again. Brilliant. Hysterical!

A lovely day, with a lovely niece. Great fun. Thank you! xx

Seamus Heaney has died...

C and I studied Seamus Heaney's poetry at the OU. This poem, 'When All the Others Were Away At Mass', was guaranteed to have us both welling up every time we read it, laughing at ourselves at the same time for always being so quickly and reliably moved by it. Hearing it again, I'm reminded of one cold, dark, winter's day - I must have been very young because in my mind's eye I'm looking up at my mum - the two of us sitting in front of the coal fire, and my mum cutting potatoes and carrots to drop into a soup pot on the floor between us.

'I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine...'

Who's a happy little tomato, then...?

The Gorgeous Girl is absolutely tickled to be a big sister (at laaaaast!) to a very beautiful little baby girl. I have no photos to show (I've seen just the one, on facebook) so I will instead share with you a picture of one of the many different types, shapes, colours and sizes of tomato we have accumulated from our own garden, and from our friends' garden (we've been watering their plants while they are away).

I imagine this is how the GG will have reacted to seeing her new sister last week - with an adoring smile, and looking just a little bit rosy-cheeked!

As C said, the new baby is gorgeous (she really is)... but he thinks perhaps not quite as gorgeous as the GG when she was born. This said with a knowing grin, understanding full well that the little one's dad will be thinking that his new daughter is the most gorgeous thing he has ever seen. And, of course, they're both right.

Perfect day...

The sun has come out, and the house is filled with music... One lovely niece is here, enjoying access to C's piano (she doesn't have one where she lives) and we're being treated to bits of the soundtrack to The Piano, and snippets of Life On Mars and Perfect Day. Lovely stuff...

As a quick aside, by emptying out a tub of earth the other day I have inadvertently created a Sparrow Sandpit to go with the existing Bird Spa... the headless dove is just there to keep 'em in line.