This and that and not very much

Some mornings when I wake up I feel so dead I ring Dave - who is in his study - and ask if he’ll bring me a cuppa. And being a sweetie, he does.

He gives me the tea, and draws the blinds and the trees look beautiful in the morning sunshine. Then he goes back to his graveyard research, and I can’t face the news, so I read the last few posts on the blog to see if I ever write anything that isn’t about Gaza. I don’t very often and I must try harder. Then I still can’t face the news so I check Garrison Keillor’s blog for a new post. There is something about reading GK first thing in the morning that is ineffably comforting.

This is how he describes someone you can find in the news:

“He’s the man who never told a joke or made fun of himself or petted a dog or put his arm around a friend who wasn’t bought or paid for.”

The other day after I washed my hair I left it loose for a while and Dave exclaimed in surprise “Your hair is so long it would go in a plait!”

Dear reader, I have been wearing it in a plait everyday for four years, and this is what you get when you’ve been married for 54 years and counting. Your spouse does not see you.

Yesterday I saw my tweezers on the dressing table and they reminded me I hadn’t checked for whiskers lately, and when I did I found the most horrific one in full view. OMG I need to live with a friendly female who will point such horrors out.

This weekend is Derbyshire Open Arts, which means local artists - amateurs and professionals - open their homes to show their art, or gather in village halls to do the same. Dave and I spent Saturday morning visiting some.

When we go in, Dave (the asocial introvert ) immediately engages the artist, saying things like “Tell me about your painting” while I (the sociable extrovert) am tongue tied, and hang back and look at each piece with a scrutinising eye.

I am in awe at Dave’s ease in engaging with strangers. On the way home in the car I said “You’re amazing. I never know what to say. If someone said to me Tell me about your paintings I’d be tongue tied. Pretend you don’t know me and ask me a question, just for practice.”

“OK, why did you paint the mugs almost life size?”

“Oh, because my husband made me buy all these huge canvases I didn’t want and I need to use them up.”

Eat your heart out Frida Kahlo.

Letter from home

Well, France, Canada and the UK have finally said something to Nethanyahu and I’m thankful, even if it is a year too late. Let’s pray that concrete action will indeed follow.

My thoughts return to Gaza throughout every day, and I look for every opportunity to sell my cards, with all the profits going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. 

A selection…

Dave just told me off for trying to make every occasion a marketing opportunity. I suppose he’s right, and people should be able to visit us without being pounced on. 

On Wednesday I went on an ‘introduction to oil painting’ course. It was held at Chatsworth House

…in the old potting shed. It was interesting and enjoyable and convinced me I don’t like oils! They take too long to dry and I am too impatient. I want to get on with my paintings, not do a bit and then wait 24 hours before I can do any more.

Acrylics are my medium. Having said that, I’ve been finding it hard to get started lately. And I’ve discarded my two latest paintings as failures. I don’t know if it’s because my health has been sub-optimal, or what. I feel as though I’ve lost faith in myself.

Maybe it’s the sunny weather making me think I should be doing something more active outside. I find painting outside too distracting. The trees and the flowers are so beautiful. Everything around here is gorgeous right now. May in England is the best month of all. The trees are lush, the cow parsley along the lane is high, the skies have been blue for several weeks.

But now every gardener and farmer is longing for some rain. I’d like it to rain every night and be dry by breakfast time.

The best thing that’s happened on the home front this week is the blackbird. For weeks he’s been somewhere else, and I was pining for him, but now every teatime  he sits on the chimney and sings to us in the garden.

Here are two poems that relate to this rambling post…

It’s Monday morning and Mr Starmer is still a friend of Israel

 

Dave’s latest letter to our Labour MP:

Children wait in the hospital for their mother, who has been killed by the Israelis:

This is an old photo. The hospital won’t be there any more. 

Please consider donating to Medical Aid for Palestinians - a registered British charity.

Contrast

I’ve been away on a five day break and I’ve had a blog post half written about Starmer and Gaza, and me, for most of the week…but serious relaxing, talking and wave watching has got in the way. I needed a break. I’ve been under par. A booked holiday was postponed for a month due to circs beyond my control, and my dear friend Het said “Come and stay with us!”

So I did.

This is the view from Het’s terrace

This is the view from Het’s sitting room

That’s the colour of the sea in Sennen Cove.

And this is the colour on the other side of the peninsula

And can you spot me in this one below - the person on the right, about to go for a paddle?

Dave hates the sea. He thinks it’s a waste of space. And he detests the noise of the waves. For me there is nothing as relaxing as sitting watching the tide come in, or lying on the sand in warm sunshine listening to it. Troubles drifted away. Decisions were made. And there was an awful lot of nothingness, by which I mean drifting. It was just what I needed.

But still the news broke in.

Starmer’s latest speech on immigration, for example.

Please, please, someone tell him that it is poverty he needs to eradicate, not people.

Well before I didn’t vote for him, I had decided I didn’t trust him because of his answers to two questions in one of those brief Q and A pieces I read in a weekend magazine.

He was asked if it was more important to play or to win, and he said to win.

And he was asked what was the last lie he had told, and it was a lie to his children about the ingredients of something he’d made them for tea.

And I knew he was not my kind of man, let alone leader.

Meanwhile, this week, UK government lawyers were arguing in court that there is no evidence of a genocide being committed in Gaza, so selling arms to Israel is perfectly legit. And the genocide continues.

Meanwhile…

There I was in Cornwall, in heaven. How do we reconcile the immense suffering of so many others with our own happiness?

Reading the news

 Yesterday I went to the Guardian online and was faced with this:

And I couldn’t face reading the top story about that awful man and skipped to the story top left - Cringe! How millennials became uncool.

I used to complain about the flippant and trivial stuff that appeared in the paper, and now it’s sometimes the only thing I can bear to read. 

On Instagram just now I was faced with this from Choose Love, and I didn’t skip it.

How can politicians turn a blind eye to this? Why are none of them saying anything? Why are none of them condemning Israel? Why are they still selling Israel arms? 

Is it because they don’t want to get on the wrong side of Trump?

They should shun Trump, and stand up for justice, peace and humanity. I’m relieved we have a new Pope who appears to be in the same groove as Pope Francis. Perhaps he will lead the way.

Conversations

I had a lovely day of sunshine and conversations yesterday.

First off was an early walk with Dave down the Trail to Hassop Station for a coffee. We sat outside in the sunshine and talked about 

How Labour’s lack of socialist policies and the cutting of welfare benefits is handing success to Reform; 

Why our newish Labour MP had chosen this week to respond for the very first time to letters from each of us…after ignoring our letters for nine months;

The use of subtext in screenplays and domestic conversations;

Why Dave doesn’t read fiction;

The fact that I know what Dave watches on YouTube (woodwork, music and politics) whereas he hasn’t a clue what I watch on my iPad, apart from Neighbours;

And how we both like walking down to Hassop Station not for the coffee, but for the walk and the chat.

After that I drove into Sheffield for lunch with a friend, but on the way, I spotted the lovely Jaine and two and a half year old MsX going home from the park. What a treat encounter! I talked to MsX about how many times she went down the big slide - she goes down the big slide on her own now! And I’m telling you, it is a very big slide.

Then I had lunch with my friend - who I’ve known for 50 years. How is it that I am so old I have a friend I’ve known that long? I first met her when she was a student doing a thesis on spoonfeeding babies, and Isaac and I were subjects.

We sat in the sunshine and I had the best bacon sandwich I’ve had in years, and we  talked about

Our families;

Our health;

How crap this so-called Labour government is;

Good films we’d seen recently and good books we’d read;

Our paintings/art;

Her pottery;

Art classes;

Trying to shuffle off longstanding voluntary responsibilities we had onto other people and failing;

The lack of volunteers;

The doings of mutual friends;

How beautiful the spring trees and blossoms are.

Then I went to the opticians to choose some new specs and I talked to Het, by which I mean I texted pics of me in two options, and as always she responded in time for me to choose the right ones - I had given her two choices and she close the ones I was favouring.

The rejects

The ones we picked

Later I spoke to MsX’s dad on the phone who said her latest bon mots were (when asked to put on her shoes) “I don’t know where they are, I’m afraid. I’ll have to go and search for them.”

And later I spoke to the lovely Jaine on the phone, because I realised that in our earlier chance encounter, I had talked to MsX, and asked Jaine after her family but not about her,* and I felt awful and wanted to apologise. 

*this kind of thing unfortunately happens when you are besotted with your grandchildren.

The phrase “the long slide” has stuck in my head, and now I realise where it comes from:

 

Thursday at Hepworth Towers

Well, what do you know?

After nine months of being in post our Labour MP has finally replied to a letter!

I wrote to complain about the changes to disability benefits, and he sent me a long and detailed explanation. 

I wonder why he has replied on this issue and not to our many letters about Gaza. Surely it’s not because his majority (350) is much less than the number of people in our constituency who will lose their PIP under the new dispensation?

Meanwhile, Dave and I learned this week that the RAF is flying reconnaissance planes over Gaza. They have conducted more than 500 such flights since December 2023, and the story is that they’re solely for locating hostages. I am baffled as to how they do that. 

Surely they’re not in cahoots with the Israelis, are they? The U.K. government does allow arms sales to this criminal regime, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

The sun rises in spite of everything.

And  the lime trees opposite our house are so beautiful this week it makes me want to go up and hug them, one at a time, all along the row. 

And in case our copper beeches are listening - yes, of course I love you, too.

Do you remember Garrison Keillor of Lake Woebegon fame?

He has a blog, and some of his posts are excellent. I enjoyed this one today.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/a-happy-man-out-for-a-drive/

That’s it. I must get up and plant my sweet peas. Perks must be about it.