I'm looking forward to getting into the new car.
I'm looking forward to seeing my best pal tonight.
I'm looking forward to seeing JT tomorrow night.
I'm looking forward to Blue's birthday party on Friday night, with most of her favourite humans and a dog-friendly menu.
I'm looking forward to the weekend, and some jobs in the garden.
I'm looking forward to going jogging with my brother on Monday.
I'm looking forward to seeing my pal Lizzie on Tuesday.
I'm looking forward to seeing Date Night on Thursday.
I'm looking forward to going to Ireland with the best pal for a three day 'Research Trip' on Friday.
I don't like having nothing to look forward to. Don't think that's going to be a problem for a couple of weeks...
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
50. The old Mercedes
Today we decided to send our lovely old Mercedes to the great dealership in the sky. It was about to cost more to mend than was sensible, and we had to let it go. But it's a sad day, because that car has done us proud.
It's 19 years old and it's got 155,000 miles on the clock. That's a lot of trips to Suffolk and Kent, and Primrose Hill. But it's also taken us in palatial splendour to North Norfolk, North Yorkshire, the Isle of Wight, Northern France and to the very tip of Cornwall. It has ferried us quietly and safely when we have been low and it's gone like a greased piglet when I've been cross, on my own, and amped up on Coca Cola (let's hope Herself doesn't read this or I won't be allowed to drive the new car).
It has coped with wardrobes, sofas and at one point an entire kitchen. It has coped with one small but hairy dog. It has taken a chunk out of my head, but it was my fault, and then it looked after my lovely friend who had to drive it home for me because I was talking more nonsense than usual and couldn't be trusted to drive. (Maybe it was trying to tell me something.)
It was always a great car to drive, fast and responsive but also solid and stately. Many a boy racer has pulled up beside it, given it the once over and discarded it scornfully, only to be left in its exhaust fumes on green. Ha!
It has been replaced by something almost as good. But somehow I doubt that in 10 years time when we come to give up this new car we will feel the same sorrow at the parting. This was a very special car, and we'll miss it.
It's 19 years old and it's got 155,000 miles on the clock. That's a lot of trips to Suffolk and Kent, and Primrose Hill. But it's also taken us in palatial splendour to North Norfolk, North Yorkshire, the Isle of Wight, Northern France and to the very tip of Cornwall. It has ferried us quietly and safely when we have been low and it's gone like a greased piglet when I've been cross, on my own, and amped up on Coca Cola (let's hope Herself doesn't read this or I won't be allowed to drive the new car).
It has coped with wardrobes, sofas and at one point an entire kitchen. It has coped with one small but hairy dog. It has taken a chunk out of my head, but it was my fault, and then it looked after my lovely friend who had to drive it home for me because I was talking more nonsense than usual and couldn't be trusted to drive. (Maybe it was trying to tell me something.)
It was always a great car to drive, fast and responsive but also solid and stately. Many a boy racer has pulled up beside it, given it the once over and discarded it scornfully, only to be left in its exhaust fumes on green. Ha!
It has been replaced by something almost as good. But somehow I doubt that in 10 years time when we come to give up this new car we will feel the same sorrow at the parting. This was a very special car, and we'll miss it.
Monday, 12 April 2010
49. North Yorkshire
I've been going to Sowerby and Thirsk in North Yorkshire since Adam were a lad (to borrow a marvellous local phrase). Thirsk is James Herriot's town. This weekend we did not visit the Herriot Museum as we did it last time we were up - instead we visited the beautiful spa town of Harrogate, we walked up and down what felt like a mountain, and we (or mainly I) drivelled on about the daffodils, but above all we looked about us and revelled in some of the most spectacular scenery in the British Isles.
Herself drove the car up Sutton Bank, which is a hill with a 1 in 4 gradient. You have to change gear even in a 3-litre automatic Mercedes. It's that steep. Our friend Liz can get a horse box up there but she is Proper Yorkshire and therefore redoubtable in every way. Driving up Sutton Bank is fun, but when you get to the top you can pretty much see the rest of Yorkshire, which is even better.
We visited St Gregory's Minster, which is a tiny little church dating from Saxon times, with two large Saxon mausoleums inside the church and stones dating from 750AD. We walked to a place called Hold Cauldron, which was the bottom of a steep valley lined almost entirely with ancient silver birches. In the Cauldron was an old water mill with the river still rushing through it. There was nothing else there, bar the pheasants.
North Yorkshire is a long way to go for the weekend, but to visit a dear friend with two adorable Jack Russells, eat well, drink well, walk up hill and down dale, look at the daffs, run along the beck listening to the water gurgling past, pat the neck of the sweet pony, sit in the sun, and all in the company of Herself and the Parent - in my view it's well worth the trip.
Herself drove the car up Sutton Bank, which is a hill with a 1 in 4 gradient. You have to change gear even in a 3-litre automatic Mercedes. It's that steep. Our friend Liz can get a horse box up there but she is Proper Yorkshire and therefore redoubtable in every way. Driving up Sutton Bank is fun, but when you get to the top you can pretty much see the rest of Yorkshire, which is even better.
We visited St Gregory's Minster, which is a tiny little church dating from Saxon times, with two large Saxon mausoleums inside the church and stones dating from 750AD. We walked to a place called Hold Cauldron, which was the bottom of a steep valley lined almost entirely with ancient silver birches. In the Cauldron was an old water mill with the river still rushing through it. There was nothing else there, bar the pheasants.
North Yorkshire is a long way to go for the weekend, but to visit a dear friend with two adorable Jack Russells, eat well, drink well, walk up hill and down dale, look at the daffs, run along the beck listening to the water gurgling past, pat the neck of the sweet pony, sit in the sun, and all in the company of Herself and the Parent - in my view it's well worth the trip.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
48. Growing things in the Garden
A couple of weekends ago, after many weeks of threatening but never doing, Herself and I went down the Garden Centre. We bought compost-stuff and seed-stuff and plant-stuff and a grower-thing and brought it all home to test what being able to do 9 press ups means in the real world when you have to carry all your new stuff from the car to the garden.
We chucked a load of the compost-stuff and some incredibly smelly pellets called 6X on the beds, dug it in a bit with a fork or spade, and then I planted some little plants.
Reader, they're growing!
I go out there morning and evening to check on them and water them and talk to them nicely. One plant (it's a variety of lavender, I think) has gone from being quite small to being quite large and it has TWO flowers! The eau-de-cologne mint has also gone from being small to being large and when you wuffle it with your hand it makes the air smell tangy like citrus.
I have had one definite failure and one possible failure. One of the phloxes just died, and I'm not sure if my lily-of-the-valley should be showing sprouty things yet or not so it might have died but I can't bear to dig it up to find out.
The dog likes eating the 6X so we have to keep her off the beds which is quite a job when she's hungry.
So finally I've got to the gardening age. Turns out it's fun. Turns out also that my definition of 'fun' has changed in the last decade. Oh well, I never liked cocaine that much anyway...
We chucked a load of the compost-stuff and some incredibly smelly pellets called 6X on the beds, dug it in a bit with a fork or spade, and then I planted some little plants.
Reader, they're growing!
I go out there morning and evening to check on them and water them and talk to them nicely. One plant (it's a variety of lavender, I think) has gone from being quite small to being quite large and it has TWO flowers! The eau-de-cologne mint has also gone from being small to being large and when you wuffle it with your hand it makes the air smell tangy like citrus.
I have had one definite failure and one possible failure. One of the phloxes just died, and I'm not sure if my lily-of-the-valley should be showing sprouty things yet or not so it might have died but I can't bear to dig it up to find out.
The dog likes eating the 6X so we have to keep her off the beds which is quite a job when she's hungry.
So finally I've got to the gardening age. Turns out it's fun. Turns out also that my definition of 'fun' has changed in the last decade. Oh well, I never liked cocaine that much anyway...
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
47. The Dawn Chorus
cheep cheep cheep
TWEET tweet TWEET tweet
chipchipchipchipchipchip
kAARRRKKKKkarrKKKKKkAAARRKKKKKK (think this one's got a bad throat)
swirrrrswirrrswirrrrrswirrrrr
WAAHHHHWAAHHHHHWAHwahWAHWAHWAHWAHHHHWAHHHHHH (thanks Seagulls)
From Sparrow's Fart to when the men next door, in the park and over the road start with the hammers and drills.
One little birdie thought that the entire night was the dawn - such is London's inability ever to be completely dark. Poor little thing, it was quite hoarse by the morning. I only thought about catapults once or twice.
I'm glad that I can hear a Dawn Chorus, it means that this most urban of places has room within it for Nature, despite the 100 foot crane and the skips and the scaffolding and the drills and the brick dust.
Also, it means it's Spring!
PS - I learned about the Dawn Chorus from a book. Surprise! 'Beryl's Wonderful Week' - by Madeleine Collier. Published in 1944. Loved it.
TWEET tweet TWEET tweet
chipchipchipchipchipchip
kAARRRKKKKkarrKKKKKkAAARRKKKKKK (think this one's got a bad throat)
swirrrrswirrrswirrrrrswirrrrr
WAAHHHHWAAHHHHHWAHwahWAHWAHWAHWAHHHHWAHHHHHH (thanks Seagulls)
From Sparrow's Fart to when the men next door, in the park and over the road start with the hammers and drills.
One little birdie thought that the entire night was the dawn - such is London's inability ever to be completely dark. Poor little thing, it was quite hoarse by the morning. I only thought about catapults once or twice.
I'm glad that I can hear a Dawn Chorus, it means that this most urban of places has room within it for Nature, despite the 100 foot crane and the skips and the scaffolding and the drills and the brick dust.
Also, it means it's Spring!
PS - I learned about the Dawn Chorus from a book. Surprise! 'Beryl's Wonderful Week' - by Madeleine Collier. Published in 1944. Loved it.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
46. Random Literary Discoveries
My mother is an internationally renowned expert on the Mitford sisters (at least as far as I am concerned) and as a result I was introduced to The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate at a relatively young age. (Explains a lot.) I have also read a monstrous biography of Nancy Mitford by some shrivelled up old hack who was patently jealous. Not an easy read. Anyway, other than that my exposure to the Mitfords and their world has largely been vicariously via the parent, when she reminds me that she has the ENTIRE canon ready for my reading pleasure whenever I should wish it... (I think she sees it as some kind of inheritance.)
Also while I was growing up, a pair of rather gorgeous looking books used to tempt and haunt me in equal measure because I would long to read them and then be put off by the florid prose within. These were A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
So (I'm getting there, promise) the other day round the parental gaff I spy a book by the youngest (and only remaining) Mitford sister Debo who is now 90 but still raising chickens and a force to be reckoned with. I was interested in this book because I had seen the old girl on the TV and been impressed. Got through that slight tome in a matter of minutes and went sauntering off down the bookshop in Whitstable to see if I could find something else by or about her as it seemed that sort of a weekend. Without instruction, Herself handed me a book of letters between Debo Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor that not only span a 60 year friendship but also the entire middle of the last century and many of its most interesting events. Both are mad, funny, posh, but brilliant in their way and swallowing the book almost whole was great and now I'm reading his travel writing because everything literary comes full circle in the end. In my life, anyway.
I love these random literary discoveries. It was through this kind of wandering that I discovered Elizabeth Knox, Elinor Lipman, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Andrew Miller, Eudora Welty, Alan Bennett and many many others. My life so far has not included much actual wandering and perhaps I should see about changing that, (TOO BUSY READING!) but for now I'm happy roaming about the literary landscape, footloose and fancy-free. It doesn't always pay off, but when it works it is a source of immense pleasure and hence one of my precious 365.
Also while I was growing up, a pair of rather gorgeous looking books used to tempt and haunt me in equal measure because I would long to read them and then be put off by the florid prose within. These were A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
So (I'm getting there, promise) the other day round the parental gaff I spy a book by the youngest (and only remaining) Mitford sister Debo who is now 90 but still raising chickens and a force to be reckoned with. I was interested in this book because I had seen the old girl on the TV and been impressed. Got through that slight tome in a matter of minutes and went sauntering off down the bookshop in Whitstable to see if I could find something else by or about her as it seemed that sort of a weekend. Without instruction, Herself handed me a book of letters between Debo Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor that not only span a 60 year friendship but also the entire middle of the last century and many of its most interesting events. Both are mad, funny, posh, but brilliant in their way and swallowing the book almost whole was great and now I'm reading his travel writing because everything literary comes full circle in the end. In my life, anyway.
I love these random literary discoveries. It was through this kind of wandering that I discovered Elizabeth Knox, Elinor Lipman, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Andrew Miller, Eudora Welty, Alan Bennett and many many others. My life so far has not included much actual wandering and perhaps I should see about changing that, (TOO BUSY READING!) but for now I'm happy roaming about the literary landscape, footloose and fancy-free. It doesn't always pay off, but when it works it is a source of immense pleasure and hence one of my precious 365.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
45. Mad Men
We're halfway through Season Three and honestly we're in the Mad Men version of the doldrums. The acting is excellent, the script is excellent and it's all three leagues better than anything produced in the UK for a very long time - but still, it's a little meh. But then Joan gets on the phone to Roger to ask him to help her find a job and I find I'm holding my breath. Literally. I hold my breath for the length of the scene because it's so good and it means so much. Luckily, it wasn't a long one.
Then Don Draper leaves his girlfriend in the car while he pops into the family home. And there, of course, is Betty, ready finally to confront her husband's lies. And the look on his face is worth an Oscar right there. I'm terrified he's going to keel over and even when Betty vaguely takes pity on the poor guy I still don't like her because she's not being played to be likeable.
There are two levels of television drama in the world at this time and they are:
1) Mad Men
2) Everything else
I don't like Paul's beard, I don't like Jared Harris, I don't like not being able to decide if I want to be John Slattery or Christina Hendricks when I grow up. The rest of it fills me with hope and joy.
Then Don Draper leaves his girlfriend in the car while he pops into the family home. And there, of course, is Betty, ready finally to confront her husband's lies. And the look on his face is worth an Oscar right there. I'm terrified he's going to keel over and even when Betty vaguely takes pity on the poor guy I still don't like her because she's not being played to be likeable.
There are two levels of television drama in the world at this time and they are:
1) Mad Men
2) Everything else
I don't like Paul's beard, I don't like Jared Harris, I don't like not being able to decide if I want to be John Slattery or Christina Hendricks when I grow up. The rest of it fills me with hope and joy.
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