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.

What’s been happening here

 

This is what remains of my posies from the lunch tables at the Bakewell Refugee Hospitality Day on Saturday. The ones still fresh are now on our bathroom windowsill.

It was such a good day - friendship, fresh air, games, sunshine, the lovely Bakewell river walk, music, conversations, crafts, and a fabulous lunch. 

Dave was on kitchen duty with someone else (not shown) 

and after seeing how much our guests were enjoying themselves, he said “You should have one every week!”

Yes, Dave. But we’re short of volunteers, and where would we get the £280 for the bus to bring our guests here, if it was every week instead of three times a year?

Now the clearing up has been done and the washing of tablecloths and feedback notes made for the next committee meeting I am trying to get fit. My bike has been neglected since February because I’ve not been well, and the weather has not been great and I’ve been busy with other stuff. But yesterday I went on a sunny ride on the electric bike and it was heavenly.

From April to November I love living here. Nuff said.

I’ve been revelling in the new spring leaves on the trees but they’re not all out yet, and I realised yesterday that if I wanted records (for paintings) of the different structures of the branches on different trees, this is my last chance for photographs for some months.

For example…

I brought three of my paintings back from the framers yesterday. Framing is expensive, and the bigger the painting the more it costs, surprise, surprise.

This one cost a lot:

This one a lot but not as much:

This morning I finished listening to ‘This is not a pity memoir’ on BBC Sounds. It’s there for a year. It’s an account of what happened in the life of the successful screenwriter Abi Morgan (credits include The Split, The Hour, Suffragette and The Iron Lady) when her family life was upended in an instant. It’s gripping and deep, and I really recommend it.

And I’ve just read and enjoyed this.

I had finished what I was reading and looked on our shelves for something fresh and found it. It was brand new, but oddly it had my name written on the fly leaf with the date I acquired it (something I always write in) and the date was my birthday in 2007. But I can’t remember who gave it to me, and it’s bugging me. Was it you, Chrissie?

Mish mash

This is a blog post of several parts. 

One

A young man in Gaza followed me on Instagram yesterday. I looked at his posts and the last few were photographs of people injured by Israeli bombs. 

I am on Instagram solely to show my paintings and to view other people’s art. I don’t use it socially or politically. It’s been a safe space from everything ‘out there.’ However, I did recently follow a protest group called Youth Demand, after I heard about them. They’ve been protesting about the genocide in London in the last month. I guess this is why the Gaza man has found me. You know how I feel about Gaza, but even with normal news I don’t want to look at mutilated bodies. At the same time I want to show support to Gazans. There’s the dilemma. 

Two

A few days ago there was an accident in our kitchen. Here Dave describes it:

Ours is not a house for the timid, or for those startled by a sudden hello. The days are punctuated by the clattering and shattering of falling objects, some of which then ricochet in pieces round your ankles before coming to rest under cupboards, only to be discovered very much later.

 

After a while you get inured to this cacophony of crashing cutlery, crockery and colliding kitchen bric a brac. As long as you are not trying to work on the innards of a clock at the time, or removing a speck from your eye, it doesn’t matter.

 

Why does gravity have such a strong pull here? Are we at some invisible warp in the space-time continuum that grabs things from the tightest grasp and hurls them to the floor?

 

No, no. Sue has always been not so much absent minded as present minded somewhere else, and she has refined this vagueness by cultivating clumsiness and honing it to an art form.

 

This week, she upped the game.

 

I was loading the dishwasher last thing at night – half-past eight, Hepworth time – and everything was going smoothly, and I paid no attention to Sue coming in. There was a sudden discordant clang as her iPad hit the bottom shelf of the dishwasher, and I was hit by a cold tsunami as Sue emptied an entire pint glass of water over my back. The falling iPad might have escaped attention but not the water, and I let out a shocked expletive and possibly a sharp gasp.

 

Hmm. This is a whole new technique. I may be wearing waterproofs around the house in future.

Three

The spring leaves are emerging shyly from their shoots. I LOVE this time of year. The new leaves are so beautiful, like newborns’ fingers - tiny and tender. I’ve taken so many photos of tiny leaves on different trees over the last two weeks, and now I’m attempting a painting on the theme. Here are twiglets on one of our silver birches:

And look at these darling tiny cones on the self seeded larch tree in our back garden (Dave’s hand is to show the scale):

Four

 

Letter from home

I’ve been sitting in bed having breakfast - a home made hot cross bun (thanks Dave) and Yorkshire tea - listening to Dave recount multiple reports from a coroner working in West Yorkshire in the latter part of the 19th century.

Dave was initially looking for the graves of his great grandparents but it’s led him down a long winding road of research, which originally centred on graveyards in Castleford. He has since researched the work of local clerics, child mortality, the Burial Act of 1880, and now he is reading the reports from a coroner who worked in the area for 48 years and kept meticulous notes. So much of what Dave has worked on has nothing to do with the original quest: he is simply captivated by the relevant/irrelevant details.

I completely understand his fascination with social history, but I have to say that hearing a litany of coroners reports ( eg boys killed by runaway coal trucks down the mines, and babies crushed while sleeping with their parents) does not make for a cheerful start to my day. 

He has now left the house to help his sister with a list of practical jobs that need doing around her house. 

I, meanwhile, will be reading the latest daily email bulletin called Letter from an American, written by Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and academic at Boston College. She writes about current events in the USA in the context of American history. Her bulletin is very readable. And chilling.

At present an innocent man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has been deported to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador and the Trump administration has accepted that it was a mistake, but despite numerous court rulings they are refusing to bring him back.

If detention and deportation to a violent prison can happen to a person who is totally innocent of any crime (and who is married to an American citizen and who has three American children) what might the authorities do to anyone else?

Rebecca Burke, a young British woman travelling between Canada and the USA, was detained for three weeks over a visa mix-up, and the British authorities had to intervene to get her sent home.

Then there is the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian with a green card who has been arrested and detained for organising protests in support of Palestine and against the US support for Israel’s genocide. And the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green card holder who was arrested at his citizenship interview this week for organising protests against the genocide.

Back to the trivia of the home front, do you remember the new expensive Aga Rangemaster cooker we bought 16 months ago? And which Dave hated with a  passion? On Monday the induction hob fused with a loud pop, while I was cooking soup. This does not bode well for the future.

We have to wait two weeks to have it fixed (thankfully under warranty) so I am working hob-less. This is doable when it’s only me I am cooking for (Dave eats yoghurt and other cold foods) but a week tomorrow is our Refugee Hospitality Day and I have some last minute cooking to do for that as part of my contribution. I am so thankful I made the two large veggie lasagnes and froze them much earlier; and Dave boiled some eggs on the top of the log burning stove the other night, so perhaps I will manage.

The only other thing to say is- Aren’t the trees sublime at the moment?

“Spring light”
Large acrylic painting by me

Dress day

When the family member who declines to be named and the lovely Jaine invited me to go on holiday with them and MsX to Portugal I knew nothing about the country. We were going to the Alentejo region and staying in a small village in deep countryside.

Jaine told me how beautiful the countryside was and about the abundance of castles and the amazing sweeps of wild flowers everywhere. 

As we drove from Lisbon airport the first thing to strike me were the storks nesting in pylons, reminiscent of creatures in a Doctor Seuss book. As we drove deeper and deeper into the countryside I was unsettled by the absence of trees I recognised, and cork trees planted as a crop, most of them with the first five feet of bark stripped. I didn’t like that. I felt sorry for the trees. But the family member who declines to be named pointed out that I didn’t object to trees being chopped down as a crop. At least the cork trees survived.

I am already bored by this blog post. I don’t write travelogues.

Suffice it to say that I had a lovely time, and shocking as this may be, spending so much time with MsX and her family was the highlight of the trip for me, not Portugal. 

I loved the wild flowers and the river beaches which gave access to swimming and I loved the day we went to the coast. Jaine and MsX and I went in a river in our cossies, but the pull of the waves at the seaside was far too scary to paddle deeper than our ankles.

Photo by Jaine

Photo by Jaine 

And you recall all that fuss over buying a dress so I’d fit in with the female company? I only managed to wear it once, largely because of the chilly weather. We had four warm days out of ten. I even had to buy a couple of fleeces in the local Decathlon because I had packed for sunshine. 

But here I am on the hottest day. In any case, there was no possibility of matching the glamour of my two accompanying female relations. 

Photo by Jaine

I emailed the above photo to Dave, who said he could only recognise me because of my watch and my feet. 

“What about my plait?” I said.

“The dress is so extraordinary it distracted me from the plait.”

“What?

“Well…you wear trousers a hundred percent of the time so when I saw a woman in an exuberant dress and sunglasses like flying goggles the plait escaped my attention.”

“Dave!”

“The feet were definitely a distinguishing feature. It was like trying to identify a corpse by the teeth.” 

p.s. almost forgot…I had never heard of the (Portuguese) Carnation Revolution until the family explained a little of the history of Portugal. Apparently it was a non violent revolution in 1974. I’m going to read up about it. There could be some useful tips.

Sunday in Portugal

 We have seen the sun occasionally this week, but not a lot. Today looks promising and I’m sitting out on the patio watching birds of prey hovering in the sky, and the breeze ruffling the two olive trees in the garden. The forecast is heavy rain and we’re having a late start in deciding what to do. Being on holiday with a two year old obviously involves constraints.

MsX has a sticker book of the solar system and space exploration and she’s skilled in placing the stickers precisely. She knows the names of the planets and yesterday when I was drawing a picture of her and asked her what pattern she wanted on her dress - stars or flowers - she said “Saturn.” Saturn is her favourite planet and she likes its moon Titan too.

When Lux and Cece were tiny I found a video online called Planets for Kids, which goes through the solar system with an accompanying song. it’s now a a favourite with MsX and we watch it over and over, as you do with toddlers. The tune is not jaunty like so many toddler tunes: it’s measured and rather melancholy, though very attractive.

It begins “I am the sun, I’m a burning ball of fire. I am very big indeed. Life on Earth depends on me. I am the sun.”

Dave has always told me that he finds the immensity of the universe, and Man’s inconsequential existence in the face of it, to be a comfort. I’m beginning - after 50 years - to understand.

When everything “OUT THERE” is so brutal and so threatening, and it’s hard to find hope in politicians or in the future, I’m finding the planets video very comforting. MsX likes Saturn best. I like the sun. The sun might be behind the clouds where we are, but it’s there.

Poem shown here by permission of the poet and his publisher.

Letter from Evora

 I’m sorry for yesterday’s inadequate post.

I am on holiday (check last but one post to find out who with) but I still see the news and I still get emails in my inbox from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Good Shepherd Collective, the Refuser Solidarity Network (Israeli conscientious objectors) and of course I still see the news.

And while the headlines are full of Trump and his tariffs, as far as I can see no western leaders (including our very own dead loss leader) have condemned what Israel is up to now. Yes they were full of it when there was a ceasefire, but not so much now the IDF are murdering paramedics and bombing babies. Where is the condemnation? And are they going to object to the new incursions into Gaza? No, they’re going to keep on selling them bombs. 

No wonder young people in the shape of Youth Demand are holding planning meetings in rented rooms in Quaker Meeting Houses about ways to stop the genocide (as well as protest about the lack of action to protect the climate.)

Why didn’t the police just knock on the door or ring the bell instead of breaking down the listed building doors? Quakers may be dissenters and demonstrators but they are peaceful, non violent ones. And we are a welcoming and inclusive church. There was no need for the police to act like thugs. Yes, we protest, we hold peace vigils outside arms fairs and nuclear bases and march against genocides, but we are not violent. Look at our history. We do not fight. 

This current UK government cannot tolerate dissent, however. The Tory government brought in laws to stifle it and the current so-called Labour government have let these laws stand.

This is an excerpt from a message to Quaker meetings:

I’m wondering where it’s going to end…The same way things are going in the USA, where someone who wrote a letter protesting about the genocide was arrested by masked officials on the street and taken off to detention away from her home town?

I’m playing with two year old MsX by a lake in Portugal and worrying about the world she is growing up in.

The latest from Palestine

 This is the latest email report from the Good Shepherd Collective, which is an organisation based in Palestine. 

I’m sorry I can’t make the print any bigger without typing it all out myself.

Letter from home

The political landscape is too bleak. This Labour government is shockingly heartless and in cutting aid to the poorest and sickest, it disgraces its name and its history; and things are so bad in the USA that we have a pact with our American family that we won’t bring it up in conversation. Meanwhile Israeli forces continue in their obscenities.

On the home front…

It’s a sunny day, Cece (12) called me from San Diego beach last evening because she misses me (which warms my heart), I am off on holiday with 2 year old MsX and family in two days, and I am in so much better health than I have been. 

Today I’m going to wash, pack, and zip off to the garden centre to buy some primulas to replace the beleaguered and disappointing tête-à-têtes sitting each side of the doorstep. I planted new bulbs last autumn and had high hopes, but the severe frost burned half the new leaves that were emerging and this is what came up in the end. 

Note the self sown feverfew is still going strong 

They’ve obviously been bad Feng Shui…maybe if I had replaced them a month ago I would have recovered sooner.

Whatever. 

You’ve heard of Picasso’s Blue Period, haven’t you? Well…I think I’m in Hepworth’s Tree Period, because 5 out of 8 of the large acrylic paintings I’ve completed in the last six months are of trees…

No matter how many letters we write, no matter how much boycotting we do, no matter how many demos we go on, it seems we can't stop Israel terrorising and killing Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. But we can give money to support charities working there.

Medical Aid for Palestinians is a British charity that has been working in the area for over 40 years. I commend them to you. 

Reasons to be thankful

 I heard the blackbird sing for the first time this morning (at 5.20am).

Dave brings me a mug of Yorkshire tea first thing in the morning if I’m feeling rough, and often when I’m not.

The GP seems to have worked out the cause of my health problem, and found the solution.

I have had enough zip and motivation to pick up my paintbrush again.

Two thirds of my sweet peas have germinated.

In the back if the wardrobe I have found an old Monsoon skirt I have always liked, which is now probably fashionable again, 20plus years on.

I have a lovely family.

I made some soup out of a handful of old vegetables languishing in the salad drawer of the fridge, which was so amazingly delicious I had it for lunch and tea yesterday.

The daffodils are out in our garden.

‘April’ by S J Hepworth 2021

I’m going on holiday to Portugal with MsX next Sunday.

Odds and ends, fury and trivia.

I am still not well, a month after I first came down with that stinking cold. I’m really NOT asking for sympathy, I’m just reporting. 

So, because I woke up still not well I decided I was going to treat myself and do the puzzles first before I looked at the news.  I went to the NYT puzzles page for their free puzzles. I am currently addicted to Connections and Strands, but today I even did Wordle ( which I got bored with and gave up last year.)  After that I turned to a puzzle called Typeshift which I’ve been doing for years. 

Then I read the news, and I wish I hadn't, as it’s bad across the board - domestic and international. First Gaza. Hell has been unleashed again courtesy of the Israelis, and it was reported earlier this week that our esteemed ( 😂 ) leader Starmer is hosting the Israeli foreign minister in Parliament this week. 

On the home front he is going to cut disability benefits, not just to save money but in some sort of moral crusade. These cuts will hit the poorest families hardest, sending yet more children into poverty.  70% of families containing someone with a disability are already going without food, heating and hot showers. And Labour wonders why people in deprived areas are turning to Reform. 

I am thankful every day that I voted Green and not for this cruel Tory government masquerading as a socialist one. Not that my lack of culpability makes anything better.

I have written to my new “Labour” MP who never writes back, unlike his Tory predecessor, and I have signed petitions and I have donated money. I am currently selling the greetings cards from my paintings to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians. If postage wasn’t so horrendous I’d be advertising them on here. This is the latest most popular one:

Hey ho, let’s get back to musing about trivia. 

With reference to names and roles in the last post:

After I wrote this I thought of something else which might be relevant. Dave and I have never used the terms sister or brother when talking to our children, by which I mean, we have never said things like “Tell your brother it’s teatime.” I would say “Tell Isaac it’s teatime.” I have heard other parents do the former, but we have always used names not roles. What’s the significance of this? Any suggestions?

(I do sometimes use the word ‘daughter’ on the blog, but that’s because she doesn’t want to be named.)

I’m going to find more puzzles now. 

Feeling like me

 Ok. Just for five minutes, forget the fact that the world is being dominated by a lying, law-breaking fascist, and let’s think about something trivial.

Do you wear dresses?

I used to wear dresses and skirts when I was in my twenties and thirties and later when I worked in an office. Now I wear them once every few years. The last time was in the heatwave of 2018. That year I bought a long cool dress on impulse one day, walking through Bakewell (our local town), a place that has three clothes shops that sell dresses.

One reason for my reluctance is that I don’t have pretty legs. My legs are shapely, but they are chunky. And nowadays I have one of those unsightly vein blemishes that I really don’t want to share with the world.

Also, jeans and trousers and dungarees just seem more practical for the kind of life I lead. I feel especially myself in dungarees.

My painting dungarees

My smart dungarees 

And for posh, I look good and feel myself in well cut trousers. I’ve just looked through my photo collection and realised that I wore some kind of posh trouser combo for all my children’s weddings. 

Here’s the last.

But in two weeks I am going on holiday to Portugal with the family member who declines to be named, the lovely Jaine, and MsX, and I thought it might be warm enough to require a dress. Also, both the lovely Jaine and MsX wear a lot of dresses, and I would fit in.

So I trawled my favourite brands on the net and landed on two expensive ones (at Boden and Sahara) and a reasonably priced one in Seasalt. I bought the Seasalt one in Bakewell on Sunday, after Meeting, and it is still in its brown paper carrier on the blanket chest. Why? I ask myself. I know the answer…it’s because I am still unsure about it and I am certainly not excited about it, which is how I want to feel when I buy something new to wear. I LOVE clothes but I am puritanical about spending money on them so if I do splash out I want to be really, really pleased.

This is the photo I took of the dress and sent to Het and Chrissie to see what they thought.

Chrissie said:”It’s lovely. Really suits you.”

This is the WhatsApp confab I had with Het:

So there we are. The dress sits in its bag and I have to decide whether or not to keep it. 

The puzzle is…Why do I not want to feel like a Mum or a Gran when I am very happy to be both of those things. I wonder if the answer is related to the fact that my children and my grandchildren call me “Sue.” ( And they call Dave “Dave”.)

I had my first two children when I was very young. And the reason the first started calling me “Sue”  is because she used to call me “Mummay” (sic) and I hated it and said to her “If you can’t call me “Mummy” call me “Sue”” so she did. 

The first four grandchildren also called me Sue, but when MsX arrived recently I thought I’d try “Gran.” But then after two weeks I decided it didn’t feel like me - even though grandmother is probably the role in all my life I am happiest to fill -  so I am “Sue” to her as well. (For some reason this is faintly disturbing to the family member who declines to be named.)

Back to the dress. I don’t think there IS a dress out there that I would be excited about. Not even an expensive one. I don’t much like the fashions at the moment. At least I don’t like the ones that have sleeves (to cover my 75 year old arms) and long skirts.

And the dress sits in its bag.

Howard and Hilda of Hepworth Towers

Well. My snot finally dried up after two soggy weeks, and then I got laryngitis. I know it’s that because I checked my symptoms on the NHS website last night.

The good thing about this affliction is it hasn’t stopped me from going out on my bike. I had been depressed into the ground with the snot, on top of the cold grey weather and the dark dark news, but the sun came out last Monday and stayed out all week and it’s still out today! When I went for my first spring ride on my electric bike it was better than a dose of anti-depressants. I came home on a high. And I’ve been out for another three rides since. This has carried me through the week despite the painful throat. 

There are just two snippets of news from Hepworth Towers. 

One is that we both now wear hearing aids.

We’re the Howard and Hilda of hearing aids. 

Remember them? from Ever Decreasing Circles?

 It has made our evenings less fraught in terms of reading out crossword clues.

It had been:

“Did you say retch?”

“No! Fetch! FETCH!”

I’ve had hearing aids for three years but they were so uncomfortable and a struggle to put in, so I never wore them, much to the annoyance of some of the younger members of the family. Then I had a check up and they gave me a new pair that are easy to put in, and more importantly they showed me I had been wearing them in the wrong place on the back of my ear. So now I am a happy bunny.

When the audiologist first turned on the new ones on I flinched. “NO! Too loud! I’m a Quaker, I like quiet.” So she turned them down and programmed them to increase in sensitivity over the ensuing three months. Isn’t that clever? And all free on the NHS. 

Dave had an appointment and couldn’t believe they gave him a pair to take home the same day. He says he feels like a new man. And his guitar sounds like a new guitar. He’d been puzzling over why it wasn’t producing harmonics any more. Magically, now it does. 

At least the NHS is working in this particular specialty. Though my friends who live in Sheffield are only allowed one hearing aid each. What?

The other bit of news is that Dave was on BBC Radio 4’s Any Answers yesterday! (8th March)  

Go Dave! He was the first caller, and was talking about whether the UK could call the USA an ally now. If you’re interested you can hear him on BBC iPlayer. 

He was so impressive, and I was so proud. 

And that is our news, such as it is.

You can see why I don’t blog much now, can’t you?

No one wants to read political stuff, and actually I can’t bear to give it any more attention than it’s already taking up in my brain; and secondly, life is so quiet here.

Having said that, I do recommend this piece that was in the Guardian yesterday:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/07/donald-trump-america-mafia-state

Enjoy your Sunday!

Catch-up

  ‘What can I do to cheer you up?’ Dave said at teatime yesterday.

‘Get rid of Trump, replace Starmer with Corbyn, clear my head of snot,’ I said. ‘Make me feel better.’

I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. I’m on day 9 of a cold and although my head is still full of it, and I have no energy, I am only blowing my nose once an hour. For this relief much thanks. 

And now I feel bad for complaining when there are people all over the world without shelter, without food and in mortal danger. How dare I complain? How dare I?

So what’s been happening at Hepworth Towers besides the depletion of 5 full boxes of Kleenex in a week?

1    I’ve been too ill/fed up to paint.

2    I’ve watched too many reruns of Downton Abbey. For some strange reason this seems to be my go-to telly when I’m ill.

3.    I’ve been trying and failing to write a piece on the subject of “When the world feels very dark, where do you find hope?” for our Quaker newsletter. I set the question and we’re all trying to answer it. 

3    I went to London with my daughter MsZ (name withheld at her request…she’s not a show off like me) to see an exhibition called ‘From Goya to Impressionism’ at the Courtauld, but mainly to go to the last night of Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. It’s a dramatisation of the Noel Streatfeild children’s book, if you’re unfortunate enough not to have heard of it, and she and I both loved it as children.

I’d been looking forward to it for two months, ever since I got the invitation, so I went, even feeling like death on a biscuit. I wore a mask in enclosed spaces with MsZ, including the theatre, so she didn’t succumb. 

I loved the production for which we had the best seats I’ve ever had at the theatre, but I loved spending the weekend with MsZ even more.  It was very special, as it always is being with an adult child on a solo trip, and I’m glad I went even feeling awful, because she is so busy these days that although she lives just half an hour away, I rarely see her. I talk more to Cece (12) who lives 5000 miles away.  The exhibition went by in a blur and I couldn’t finish my delicious dinner on the Saturday night, and I had no energy to take photographs so I’m glad Z did.  

4.    On Tuesday morning I walked into the sitting room to get my glasses and heard a ruffling in the log burning stove. We’ve had birds come down the chimney before, and my first thought was to leave it there for Dave to rescue when he got back from his bike ride. He’s unfazed by that kind of job. But then I remembered I am trying to learn how to do all the things that Dave usually does, because he might die before me and I don’t want to be stuck. I have even started writing instructions down in a little black book. e.g. how to wind the grandfather clock and how often, and the same for the clock in the hall. 

So…I put on protective gear (my painting clothes plus rubber gloves), opened the window and shut the door, and gently opened the stove door just a crack, to see what I was dealing with. It wasn’t a bird. It was a squirrel. OMG. I was not going to tackle a squirrel. 

When Dave got back and peeped in the door, the squirrel had vanished. He thought it was probably sitting on the plate at the top of the stove. What to do? How could it climb back up the slippery stainless steel chimney? 

We had to go out together, so we left the stove door shut, but removed the ash door on the chimney outside, in the hopes that the squirrel would smell the fresh air and be able to make it out at least that far.

When we got home there was no evidence of anything at all, but we assumed he’d escaped, and when we lit the stove last night we couldn’t smell roasted squirrel so… 

And now it’s time to get up and steam my head with olbas oil.

A Real Pain

Do you have a to-do list?

I usually send myself an email last thing at night with the next day’s to-do list as the subject title.

But when I wake up on these cold, grey, dismal, February mornings, I have been looking at the list and thinking “Can’t be bothered!” 

Then I go into my studio and light the fire and because I’m between paintings right now, having just finished this one

I wonder what to paint. And because I’m in a blue February funk, there’s nothing that inspires me, especially with the wider world veering dangerously towards an abyss of fascism.

Being in this kind of mood, it’s been hard to blog.

I will just say that Chrissie and I went to see A Real Pain, which is supposed to be funny, as well as a lot of other good things, and has wall to wall 5 star reviews, and a 96% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

We, however, would both have turned it off after 15 minutes if we’d been watching it at home, because we both found the central character, Benji, so incredibly irritating. Why would we want to spend 90 minutes with him? 

Also, neither of us found the film in the least bit funny. We’d have given it three stars and said it was mildly thought provoking.

I need to emphasise that Chrissie and I do not have identical taste in cinema, television or books.

What’s going on? Are we outside the film’s audience demographic?

Lastly I have to ask those of you who have seen the film, what did that scene mean where the two guys place their large pebbles right in the middle of a doorstep in memory of their grandmother who used to live there? I know why they wanted to leave the pebbles, but why right in the middle of the doorstep, where an old person walking out could stumble on them and fall over and break their hip? Was it to show they were thoughtless? Or entitled? And why, when they were told by a neighbour to move them, did they pocket the stones? Why didn’t they just move them to the side, where they should have placed them in the first place?

This has been bugging me ever since I saw the film. I’d love to ask Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote the screenplay, what was in is head?

OK. Rant over.

My to do list this morning has two things on it - varnish my last three paintings, and go to a planning meeting for this year’s refugee hospitality days. That’s fine.

I haven’t drawn the blinds yet so I don’t know if it’s grey, but the weather forecast gives rain and a temperature that feels like minus 2 degrees F. And so it continues. 

Mary died ten years ago on February 13th, and I blogged the following February, that I would never moan about February again, because I was here to enjoy* so much and she wasn’t, her life was cut short. But here I am, moaning again. What can I say? I think the winter gets harder to endure the older you get.

*Talking of things I enjoy…last week I was playing shop with 2 years 3 month old MsX, and when I said I’d like to buy some cheese, she said “We have some Jarlsberg, but we’ve run out of Brie.” 

And last week I played a video game called Dress to Impress with 12 year old Cece- she in Colorado and me here at home. Amazing and hilarious.

Letter from home

I turned 75 last year but I haven’t got to grips with it yet. What I mean is this: I am fairly fit, but I walked 10,000 steps yesterday on a fabulous sunshine walk 

(Don’t you just love hilltop hawthorn trees - their flat wind-blown shapes and their spiky sturdiness?)

and when I got home I was too tired to do the vacuuming, even though there were visible and accusing wood chips on the stair carpet. Is that normal? 

I mean…how much exercise and how much energy is a fit and healthy 75 year old supposed to have? 

I sat on the sofa by the fire (it was cold here), did some admin and some painting, had lunch, more painting, talked to Lux over her Boulder breakfast on FaceTime, and then because Dave was out all day, decided to watch a film that I know Dave would hate. It was 4 o clock by this time, but I still felt faintly guilty about watching telly in the daytime. (Thank my wonderful mother for this.)

I watched Moonstruck which I think is a ridiculous film but I love it anyway. I especially love this bit of dialogue:

As I texted to Het, Nicholas Cage is not my type but after this injunction I’d get in his bed!

And here I am now, still sitting in my bed at five to eight in the morning 

with no desire to get up. Is that OK? I mean…I am 75. But then I am gainfully occupied, talking to you. (Notice my justifying myself again?) 

Second question…how much money would you spend on a 176 page novel by your favourite author? Here’s why I want to know…

I had decided to buy a new small cafetière and when I got to the checkout on Amazon they wouldn’t give me free postage so I thought - as I am bored stiff with the winter - ooh, maybe Anne Tyler has a new novel out, and she did. It’s out next week in hardback but it is very short and costs £12.99. If I bought it I’d get free postage for that and the cafetière. £12.99 is a lot to pay for a short novel but on the other hand if I bought a toastie and a coffee at Hassop Station it would cost about the same and I wouldn’t think twice about it. And I am soooooo bored with the winter, so why not treat myself?

This is a lot of wittering, but it raises the question of how much you would pay for things in various categories…

Enough wittering.

The other thing that has been occupying my downtime is watching lots of films about David Hockney on YouTube. Hockney is a hero of mine. One thing he said, which I will remember, is a Chinese saying…”you need three things for painting, eye, hand and heart. Two won’t do.” 

I so agree. This is why I won’t do commissions. My heart would not be in a commission and I would not have sufficient motivation to complete it. My heart was certainly in the painting of our mug rack, which is now finished. As you can see, I chose pink for that top left mug. (See last post but one.)

Oh, and with reference to the mystery of the flashes of sunlight at the top, and the tumblers I missed off because they were too hard to paint, who knows what the sun is bouncing off before it reaches the wall? I had thought it was coming straight through the front room window and then through the stained glass window between that room and the kitchen, but now I am wondering if it was bouncing off the glass table in the front room before it came through the window. It’s a mystery, and it won’t be solved until December 30 this year, when the sun will be in the exact same position. I shall have to remember to check.