A Bit Of A Catch-Up

First of all, Woody has responded well to the magic juice provided by the vet. No more coughing and he's eating tremendous amounts of food and... he loves everybody. Especially Hannah, Evie and Martha, and even Nellybert.

Then there was the matter of Bert's book choices. Strumpet City was turned down because it was too big and he fell in love with David Sedaris. Bert never ceases to surprise me.

On the subject of books, First Daughter was laid low with COVID-19 for a week and has since made a full recovery. I asked her if she'd filled her downtime with books or streaming. She told me she'd just sourced a book, a dystopian novel set in Ireland that she'd hoped would fill the hours. But, because of current real-life events, the novel proved to be a tough read. If only I'd known I could have loaned her my small collection of Eva Ibbotson romances.

Speaking of which, it was Ganching who alerted me to Eva Ibbotson's adult fiction which, as Ganching informed us, Ibbotson wrote for 'very intelligent women with the flu'. It just so happened I'd already found three of those novels in a charity shop and hadn't got round to opening them as I thought they'd be a bit saccharine. I'm on the third one now and finding it and the previous two quite delightful. 

Zoe getting the Covid spurred me to book my free jabs, flu and the coronavirus. That happened this morning and straight after I was off to Antrim to breakfast with Jazzer. We had a quick look around the charity shops to see if we could find a particular kind of knee-length boot that Martha needed to complete the Buffy the Vampire Slayer costume she wanted to wear at Halloween. Unfortunately, we did not find them except we did but three sizes too small.

Then we went to Dobbies. I was quite excited about this as the last time I was in a Dobbies (somewhere near Lisburn) I got the most gorgeous crocus bulbs and some  Nasturtium 'Phoenix' seeds . Nothing appealed to me at Antrim Dobbies apart from a new pair of cuttings snips. The prices were sky-high. I discovered that the monster deliciosa I dismantled (because it got too big) and turned into six new plants would have cost me £120. We could not wait to get out of it. I won't be back. At least until the spring of 2024 if the world still exists then. 

Back at Jazzer's, I gathered nasturtium seeds from her plants. Mostly Phoenix. Funnily enough, she has a lot of them in her garden because I grew them from my collected seed and accidentally gave her all the seedlings because I'd neglected to label them. 

So that is my catch-up. I will try to get a few posts in over the weekend as I am going to Norfolk and London next week and Will Not Be Blogging.

And speaking of London, I heard the sad news this week that an old friend from Ballymena had died there at the start of the month. Kevin was one of the people that sent my life spinning in a new direction. And that's a story on its own. 

He was a good bloke. Too good for Ballymena.

Reasonably Happy

This evening, in the polytunnel, a glass of wine to hand, three books on the go, three kinds of nasturtium to sow and two sorts of chilli seedlings to pot on and I felt happy enough.

Almost as if I wasn't living through a global pandemic.

But know what's really annoying me right now? Television advertising that is riding on the back of stayingathome and beinglockeddown. Hey, peeps! This is all a bit shite, you can't go out, God knows how long it's all going to go on and hopefully we wontdie because we'reallinthistogether and theresnoflour or tinnedtomatoes and isnttheNHSwonderful? And carerstoo, letsclap and sellthemabadge. But..... buy our frozen chips, our pasta sauce, our toiletries and all will be well. For we really do care about you.

I have made up my mind to avoid all companies and institutions that are providing soothing, family orientated advertisements. Call me cynical all you like but I don't think they really give one fuck about us.

On a lighter note, I've told Martha and Evie that when all this has passed we'll be having a two-night sleepover. Their mother?

Two nights! You can have them for a fortnight! 

Can't wait.

Listening Not Blogging

Thoughts on Blogging & Audiobooks

The last time I blogged about audiobooks I'd notched up six books. Since then I have listened to
the following works -

• The Wind In The Willows
• Don Quixote (Volume I)
• Queen Lucia
• The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• David Copperfield
• The Quiet American

And I'm presently nearly finished with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But there is a snag with all this book-listenin' and it is this:

All that time, all those hundreds of hours whilst I was driving, or walking, or doing mundane tasks I'd have been thinking, and while I was thinking I'd sometimes get ideas for blogposts. Now I just listen. And listening is very different from reading and it is very different from just thinking about whatever comes into my head. Listening is good. But is it as good as reading? I'm not sure.

That is part of the reason why my blogging has become sketchier. A lot of my thinking time is taken up with listening. I still think a lot but they are important thoughts, personal thoughts, maybe not for general sharing. I think about work, ageing, Zoe's pregnancy, my mum, my family, Katy's wedding, Bert's cabin fever, the dire-dish-of-the day prediction of imminent global disaster, the weather, Hannah's general happiness, food and whatever book I happen to be listening to.

Things I Bought Today



Today I bought a vintage postcard portraying nasturtiums which I did not need. I also bought six tins of dog food which the dogs needed. Or so they said.

What I Did Today

Dirt Bird came for her tea and I made a vegetarian pasta with vegetables freshly harvested from the garden. I also made buttermilk pancakes to please Bert as he does not relish pasta. I discovered that Dirt Bird could eat her way through the Cave Hill if it was made of pancakes. In honour of our guest (to be renamed The Pancake Queen) we drank our tea from my vintage nasturtium-patterned teacups.