Acceptance
Maizy has accepted the inescapable reality of her haircut…
…although due to the unfortunate climatic conditions she’s still shivering a lot.
Today I went on a wonderful day meditation retreat – Training the mind, freeing the heart: Waking up to each moment. No shivering, much contemplation of acceptance.
Yesterday, after a rather grueling assessment process, I was accepted as a listening volunteer for the Samaritans. All volunteers sign a confidentiality agreement, for obvious reasons. This means that, difficult though it is to believe, I shall have nothing more to say on the subject other than that I am extremely happy.
Dandelions are the new sunflowers – it’s (Taraxacum) officinale
There’s even a group devoted exclusively to them on flickr. So I can’t resist taking this as opportunity to test out Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Dandelions are the new sunflowers – it's (Taraxacum) officinale
There’s even a group devoted exclusively to them on flickr. So I can’t resist taking this as opportunity to test out Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
The jewel is a bit of a strumpet
Outdoor weekend
Frolicking in the sunshine.
Many picnics were consumed.
Twinkling summer toes
Last month I received a communication from the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP). It contained a couple of sheets of hand-written figures with an accompanying letter telling me this was the calculation of the benefit I was entitled to between May and September 2007. Enclosed was a cheque for £2.08.
There was the usual small print about how to appeal against a decision if you disagreed with it, but this was itself already the result of an appeal, lodged in October 2007, consisting of two closely-typed and closely-argued sheets of A4 and about half a tree’s worth of supporting documentation.
The only thing to do, in such circumstances, is to laugh. Which I duly did, and forgot about it.
Today I received another communication from the DWP. It appears, reading between the lines, that they may have made a mistake. No cheque, of course, but the prospect of some money somewhere down the line. Not much but better than the proverbial poke in the eye and certainly more than £2.08.
I was still digesting this interesting news as we walked back from the station after a lovely day out with A on Hampstead Heath. The local shoe-shop was plastered with big red banner signs saying “Closing Down Sale – Everything Must Go”. I dragged the tired and unwilling spawn across the road to have a quick look.
Oh what a brilliant idea. What excellent luck. Because among the heterogeneous not to say eccentric selection of shoes on offer in an extremely limited range of sizes there was exactly the right model in exactly the right colour and size for each of us. At half price.
FirstSpawn has those rather drunken looking asymmetrical black Converse hi-tops, SecondSpawn has khaki-patterned kids’ Converse hi-tops and, the astute will have already worked out, I have the purple Mary Janes which are actually, and unbelievably to me, Hush Puppies. In my youth this brand was notorious for being, well, a bland. Maybe in the intervening decades they’ve become the hight of fashion. Whatever. I love my little purple-hearted MJs.
We are all very happy and well-shod for summer.
The words
They are words like “death” and “worth” and “alone” but they need other words to join them like the stalks do a daisy chain and those haven’t arrived yet.
So all I can do is ask whether you knew that the dandelion is a member of the daisy family. I didn’t, until I checked how to spell it. How wonderful.
Split shins?
I’m so unfit that I’m stiff as a board and can barely hobble.
After my rather severe shock and general gloom on Friday I decided (after a delightful Saturday and Sunday with various friends) that what Maizy and I needed most in the world was a trip to the seaside. Because we are both, if the truth be known, salty sea dogs bitches and I at least begin to pine if I don’t get salt air in my lungs on a regular basis.
A combination of advice and research led to the chosen destination – train tickets to Seaford are cheap and there’s great walking along the coast towards Eastbourne. We got as far as Birling Gap in the time available – see the map below.
The arrow marks Seaford station, plumb in the middle of a slightly grim seaside town. Not as grim as it would be if infested with amusement arcades, vendors of seaside tat and over-oiled fish and chips but grim in a rather grey down-at-heel way.
But hiding behind that first white cliff on the edge of town is a wonderful, if rather steep in places, walk towards and over the famous Seven Sisters, a series of chalk cliffs.
They start just east of Cuckmere Haven. Which is all well and good – the path runs obediently along the cliffs from Seaford to the aforementioned Haven. But obedience there expires and in order to cross the River Cuckmere, which flows fast and deep into the sea, it is necessary to walk a mile inland along the west bank to Exceat, risk life and limb on the busy-but-single-lane road bridge there and then trudge a mile back down to the coast. Look at it on the map if you don’t believe me.
Since I’d both failed to look at anything other than a google map and had got very distracted on the beach of the west bank by groynes and their protruberances this major detour came as an unwelcome surprise.
Thank goodness I’d packed a large bottle of water and Maizy’s folding bowl.
I’m not quite sure why the cliffs are called the Seven Sisters when there appear to be eight peaks. I’m glad Wikipedia (at the link above) has confirmed this suspicion because I counted them as we went, oh so slowly, up and, slightly faster, down and arrived at a total of eight too. I thought the unaccustomed exertion and heat had addled my brain. This is the view from Short Bottom (the first dip) looking back at Haven Brow (the first Sister) and the coast towards Seaford.
Fortunately there was a bus from Birling Gap back to Seaford and enough time for a huge ice cream before it left.
I dragged my camera and lenses up and down the cliffs and not only did I not change the lens once, I left the settings from its last outing (the nearly pitch-black Joan As Police Woman gig) unchanged. Result? Crap pictures. How stupid can one get? Those I have put up have had to be thoroughly laundered through photoshop elements with the resultant tragic loss of already feeble quality. Still, I hope I shan’t forget to check the ISO setting again.
And today, oh, the stiffness. The ancient, bow-legged gammy hobblingness. Why on earth do we have muscles on the front of our shins anyway? (that’s a rhetorical question, by the way). And to add insult to injury I’m puce with sunburn. But I feel virtuous for getting some exercise, and it was worth it. Maizy appears entirely unaffected and just as bouncy and energetic as usual.
The entire slideshow of the day is here. Split shins are, apparently, more widely known as shin splints. I obviously don’t really have them, merely some rather shocked and horrified muscles.
Knitting knote – sock round-counter and cable needle
I’ve always had a bit of a problem keeping track of what row I’m on. Was it row 122 or 123? Damn and blast. Nothing to do but count them, again. Many of my knitting patterns are covered with notations like those usually depicted on the walls of prisons – endless repetitions of four vertical lines scored through by a diagonal fifth – made in an effort to keep track of where I am. Or there’s the mechanical row-counter, slid onto the end of a needle and turned on a unit each time a row is completed. The problem with both these methods is that it’s very easy to forget to make the mark, turn the bezel.
And that’s just on two needles, knitting flat fabric back and forth. The problem becomes more complex knitting in the round because there’s nowhere useful to stow the row-counter, no needle-end for it to nestle up against. But I’ve come up with a solution so cunning that it’s almost impossible to go wrong. And, I must point out, I thought this up *all by myself* although no doubt it has been known about among those wise in the lore of knitting for several hundreds of years.
So. I always know the beginning of every round because the stitches are on four needles and the start is marked by the tail of the cast on. So I always know which is “needle one”. On it is placed, as you can see above, a stitch marker (in this case a safety-pin with a conveniently-sized circle at the end). It’s placed after the number of stitches indicating the number of rounds that have been repeated. So in the arrangement shown in this photograph I know instantly that I’m on the third round of the 10 round pattern repeat. It’s impossible to forget to move it on because it’s physically there when you knit along the needle.
Oh joy! oh happiness!! No more feverish counting of hundreds of tiny rows to work out whether it’s this row I need to make the cable on, the next row or (worst of all) the row I’ve just completed and will subsequently have to unravel and rework.
The cable needle is half a toothpick, sanded down and varnished with clear nail varnish.
I’m ridiculously pleased with my own ingenuity.
frizzyLogic 