Wednesday 24th April

Evening All!

More tidying has happened, and it s very satisfying. There are so many 'methods', 'hacks', call them what you will. Earlier this year I was partway through the 'Scavenger Hunt' method,and that was pretty good fun; it consisted of selecting categories, like particular cupboards or drawers, or 'kitchen utensils', 'books', 'clothes', and then removing 10 items from that category to Out Of The House, recycling, charity shop, rubbish, whatever. It was going pretty well too, until I was rather overtaken by events and called a halt. Or rather, a halt happened.

Now I have just read about '365' decluttering; every day you sort out one item to go into the charity box or the recycling box or the rubbish box. The suggestion is that you could extend this by also tidying away one item every day - presumably this is above and beyond the usual every tidying? Still, that would be 365 items at least evicted from the premises, and another 365 found and placed into permanent homes within the premises. I rather like the idea.

I'll start tomorrow...  

Daughter's Drawings - birds on a branch 

 

One of the bits of decluttering/tidying, that was started yesterday, but not finished yet, involved my daughter's drawings. I was salvaging them from one of her old exercise books as I thought they were much too good to throw away. I asked her about sharing her drawings and she said she would much rather that I didn't share the ones from her A-level exercise book but I could share these from a blog I used to write. Just about all the drawings were done by her after she finished Uni and was looking for 'what next?'. Art was one of her subjects (always has been, actually) so I persuaded her to do the artwork and blog design (with my son).

 The blog is still alive - www.themusicjungle.co.uk - and related to when I was working as a music and piano teacher. It was a place to share all the resources, tips, and tricks that I tripped across. I haven't posted anything to it since 2020 by which time I had already stopped class teaching, but you're welcome to have a look.

This was the very first picture on the blog; it exactly expresses how I felt when starting as a piano teacher, and then as a class music teacher, and when starting up the blog...  

Daughter's Drawings- Into the Unknown

Talking of going into the unknown, I'm about to convert my pyjama tops from 'pull over the head' t-shirts to 'button up the front' t-shirts. I've got as far as cutting down the centre front, and pinning on the bias binding to cover the raw edges, and am now considering my next steps. I reckon it's going to be a job for my trusty Elna sewing machine, bought way back in 1979. Does that make it a vintage model? Not far off!

It has straight stitch, zig-zag and a weird 3-step stitch which if you set it to zig-zag as well is supposed to be good for stretchy fabrics. It will do buttonholes very manually - that takes an enormous amount of practice, and then you have to cut the slit afterwards. We shall see how I get on... tomorrow.

    

Tuesday 23rd April

 St George's Day

Not your usual telling of the story.....

St George and the Dragon - Paolo Ucello - National Gallery London

Not my Best Side - U. A. Fanthorpe

I

Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.

II

It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon--
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.

III

I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.

It was after reading this that I bought a book of U A Fanthorpe poems - they are fabulous.

Monday 22nd April

 A new week begins...

I am sitting here looking at the hearth rug with great pleasure. It us completely clear of Stuff, for the first tine since Christmas. The final bit of sorting in the hall was done at a great rate while lunch was cooking. Two crates, both empty and stacked one inside the other so that was the easy bit, and the few bits and bobs on top were sorted and rehomed (bin, cupboard, recycling,  charity shop pile). Now my father’s wheel chair is in the hall, his spare rollator is stashed in the boot of the car, and we have won another victory over the clutter.

I've given the first piano lesson of the term to a student who passed her Grade 7 last term with a merit. That's quite an achievement, especially only having zoom lessons. I am so looking forward to sharing two of my favourite pieces with her. I introduced them in the lesson and to my joy she likes them both.

I've been playing them for over 50 years; here they are;

Rumores de la caleta by Albeniz

Gymnopedie no 1 by Satie