Friday, October 25, 2013

News from the slow lane

I LOVE waking up without a list in my head.

I love not caring if Dave interrupts what I’m doing to tell me something interesting he has just heard on the radio. I love being able to sit in an easy chair with a cup of tea and look out of the window at the sky and the autumn leaves and not think I should be doing something more productive.

I am still in that post publication-frenzy hiatus which (as my friend Chrissie said) is like the time when all your exams are finished and you feel free to stay up late or stay in bed late, or not get up at all.

I am getting up.  I am doing stuff like taking down the sweet pea canes, mending holes that have worn in three favourite jumpers,

IMG_6437

having my hair cut as much like this as possible

71080020

in this picture from Isaac’s wedding from six years ago, when I had fewer wrinkles.

And I have joined a small, newly-formed jazz band, much to my delight and that of my sax teacher Mel. She seems to think that a single practice session has already improved my timing.

And when it rains I clear the drain down the lane. Every year it gets clogged up with leaves and other wayside debris and a torrent of water runs down the hill. There is something very satisfying about clearing drains. It reminds me of damming streams when I was little. It’s about changing the course of water. It’s messing about. I am becoming Compo in Last of the Summer Wine.

Yesterday, my grandson Tate was the latest person to ask me if I have started writing another book. I haven’t. But after seeing the film Love is All you Need, I have been thinking that the person who plays Kit in the film of Plotting for Grown-ups should not be Christopher Waltz, but Pierce Brosnan.

kit

What do you think?

6 comments:

lyn said...

Yes, definitely! Great idea.

Anonymous said...

I think that Pierce Brosnan is a perfect candidate . Is a very good actor , LOVING , SOLFT ... and gentlemen . The first in the list in my opinion . REGARDS FROM SPAIN !!!

Sue Hepworth said...

Thanks, Lyn, and the lady from Spain. See Sunday's question.

Liz from Kentucky said...

I'm glad I'm not the only person who thinks she is becoming Compo in later life . A few years ago ,while celebrating my 60th birthday in the west of Ireland,I told my sister that if Compo could do it so could I-------walk on walls that is (minus the wellies!) When we were young we used to run channels from one puddle to another(with wellie heels of course) much to the disgust of our many elderly neighbours ,who said the lane was in bad enough shape already./

Sue Hepworth said...

Messing with channels of water is such fun. I took my grandson down the lane the other day to have a go and be loved it too,

Liz from Kentucky said...

I think every child should "have a go". On a trip home to England many years ago with my then 3yr.-old daughter,I practically had to push her into these puddles. Playing in them is what you did,as long as long as you were appropriately shod. But then growing up on the Wirral Peninsula water was a fact of life and to be enjoyed.