Monday, July 06, 2020

Current status


The patchwork quilt has now been taking up the whole of my study floor for a week.  When I sit down at my desk to use the laptop, the chair is resting on some of the pieces. The cat is not allowed in here and everyone who does enter has to have bare feet. Dave had to stand on my desk to take the photo below.

Every time I go in the room I see the design afresh and I tweak the arrangement. I'm thinking of it as an abstract painting, and that it will take some time.




That indent at the bottom is nothing to worry about - the pieces are not all properly aligned. What is worrying me is the lack of vibrancy in a section of it. I might have to cut some more yellow, or bright green. I am hoping to be happy with it by the end of this week, and then begin on the pinning and sewing.

But last week I had various other jobs taking up my time and the joy of the patchwork wore off a little, like the joy of lockdown has.

A friend told me the other day that she doesn't have ordinary days: she has either good days or bad days. 

Another friend told me she is fed up to the back teeth with the strictures and pressures resulting from the pandemic.  This friend knows she is lucky because she has no financial worries, but there are social and domestic pressures that exhaust her. They never let up, and there are probably months and months of this to come.

Yes, lockdown has eased, but this just makes the world feel more unsafe for her and lots of other people, and so they continue as if lockdown were still in place. Dave and I are pretty much like that. He has ventured out to the bike shop for a repair he couldn't manage, and I have been to get a couple of items that it was possible to collect outside. I have been in a shop once since March 13th but that was the petrol station to pay for fuel. 

I don't much care about shopping, but I am fed up with Zoom. I want to see real people in real time in the same place as me. I want hugs from people apart from Dave. I want to go away. I want variety and fish and chips and Quaker Meeting in the Meeting House. Enough, Sue!

One thing I've learned this year is that I don't like vegetable gardening. You have to think about the dratted plants everyday, and it's tedious.

I have three six foot tomato plants outside in pots because we have no greenhouse. I have been nurturing them with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and they have been doing well and then the winds arrived and did this:



It was rescuable. But still. I'd much rather be nurturing flowers. Actually, I am not a nurturing person. It's not one of my strengths.

Moan, moan, moan.

I am 357 pages into an 800 page edition of Anna Karenina and wondering - do I really want to continue to the end? Anna's husband has just gone to the solicitor to see about a divorce. How can Tolstoy spin this out for another 400 pages? The trouble is that the only character I am engaged with is Konstantin Levin and yet even he whittles on about different types of farming and economics all the time. Yawn.  Zoe has lent me Girl, Woman, Other, and that looks much more enticing. I also have the latest Nina Stibbe book on the kindle. 

Today if the rain disappears I am going to see a couple of friends 5 miles away . We're going to sit in their garden. Bliss. Someone else's garden. Bliss. People I haven't seen for months. Bliss. 

You can probably see why I haven't blogged for a week. What is there to say when nothing changes?

I wish you a happy and a safe week, whatever you're doing.


2 comments:

Christine said...

Do push on with Anna Karenina, there are great things to come - you could skip the dull bits.

Sue Hepworth said...

OK. I will keep on. Xx