Letter from home

Right. I am going to say two more things about reading and then I promise to shut up about books for two weeks.

The first is this: I know I am a difficult reading customer so I thought I'd show you a heap of novels from my shelves that I have liked unequivocally and all but two of which I have read twice. In some cases I've read them three times.

Here's a list, in case you can't read the titles - Plainsong, Olive Kitteridge, Happenstance, 84 Charing Cross Road, Our Souls at Night, The Enchanted April, Heartburn, A Patchwork Planet, The Secret Garden, The Unstrung Harp (a minority taste, probably), Leaving Home, A Tree grows in Brooklyn, In a Father's Place, The Brontes went to Woolworths, All the light we cannot see, Homestead, The Lie, The Essex Serpent, Unless.

The second thing to say is that I am now reading a book which blog reader Sally recommended - The Heart's Invisible Furies -  which I was enjoying even though the title would have deterred me from even taking it off the shelf. Then at page 152 I stopped enjoying it because an insufferable teenage boy was going on and on about sex and it was ineffably tedious. I turned to much later in the book to see if that character was there throughout the whole book and found that he wasn't, but that someone else was going on and on about sex. Now...you know how I said I liked nature but I am not fond of nature writing? Well, the same goes for sex - I like sex, but not writing about it. And this boy was not even DOING it, he was TALKING about it. Yawn!

But I am still reading the book because it is so well written, it's pacey, and it's very entertaining. 

So what is the news from Hepworth Towers?

1/   The big news is that yesterday Isaac 

became an American citizen. He went to live in the States in 2003 but now he has become a citizen (at 48) it feels as though he has really left home. So while I am genuinely happy for him and for Wendy and the girls, there is a certain wistfulness about the event from my side of the Atlantic.

2/   I decided to stop belly-aching about the state of the garden and spend an hour every day sorting it out. Then Dave mowed all the lawns and strimmed the edges and it looks so much better that I have fresh courage and I'm going to keep at it.

3/   I wrote three separate emails to my MP and have had one response - about funding care. The two emails about the Home Office's dire treatment of refugees and the shocking deportation of people to Jamaica remain unanswered. This is not surprising, as she is a new and loyal Tory. Next up, an email asking her to support the move to keep the £20 rise in Universal Benefit. I urge you to write to your MP about this too. There is some Tory support for this measure, so it might not be ignored. Here is a link to get you started.

4/   I finished another painting:

'The colours of love and hope' 
Acrylic on canvas 35 x 29 cms

5/   Reading the news every morning is so depressing but now I have two ways of cheering myself up afterwards. The first is to take a peek inside DAYS ARE WHERE WE LIVE. This week I opened it at something that made me chuckle:

'I lead a sheltered life. I hardly see a packet of pork scratchings from one year’s end to the next. And now I have finished the last of the packets I bought in Wrenbury, my life is drab.'

The other way is to remind myself how lucky I am that I did not escape the Irish famine and emigrate to America to find myself living in a room with no sanitation with a husband and four children, to work in a cotton factory for 12 hours a day, to have three children die in infancy and to die myself at the age of 35. This is what happened to someone's ancestor in Who do you think you are? but there are still people now whose lives are desperate.

6/   I've been thinking about my father a lot this week 

and it made me take out a clutch of letters he wrote to my mother in 1968 when he was 50 and travelling in America on a Churchill fellowship looking at specific aspects of dairy farming over there. I have so enjoyed reading them.

Here's a taster:

'I'm in a palatial guestroom in an annexe adjoining the house. I only wish you were here, my darling. Two king sized beds, electric sheets [sic], sumptuous panelling, arm chairs, private bathroom with glass walled shower - everything I could want, in fact, except you and a mug for my teeth.'

and another:

'In general I find it impossible to discuss the national and racist issues with most people - I can usually tell pretty quickly how they stand and it is almost invariably at the opposite pole of opinion so I keep my big mouth shut (believe it or not!) Last night was an exception when I spent the evening with X who claims to be regarded by most people as a 'screaming liberal.' I found I had so much in common with him and his wife that we talked till nearly midnight although I had been up at 5 a.m.'

And here is one of his touching sign-offs:

'All my love darling to you and those pestilential ankle-biters I miss so much. Fred.'  

7/   The last thing to say is that I am becoming so interested in (wild) grasses that I'm going to buy a book about them so I can name them when I see them, and learn to spot rare ones.

Look at these beauties I found on the Trail:

These last are my favourites so far. They're called quaking grass, and look like this before they dry up:

Photo from The Wildlife Trust website

The beads are so delicate that they quiver in the breeze. 

That's it, friends. I hope you're having a good weekend. I'll leave you with two corners of our garden.

The long read

I finished reading EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW YOU and I enjoyed the second half very much. There's some cracking dialogue in there, even if I do say so myself. Anyway, the book is now rehabilitated inside my head. It was such a difficult book to write that whenever I've thought about it since it was published, it's made me shudder. Now I might be able to read it again in the future.

I have no idea whether other writers reread their own books. Perhaps it's a shameful thing, but I've told you before that I sometimes re-read Plotting for Grown-ups when I'm ill or sad.

Anyway, the other book of mine I have mixed feelings about is Zuzu's Petals - the book with the dreadful, inappropriate cover for which I will never forgive the publisher. 

But an old writing friend told me this week how much she had liked a particular section of it. So I just picked it up this morning and read it from there to the end, and I enjoyed it. I liked the final chapter so much I have taken out the spoilers and am going to post it on here today. It's what broadsheets call 'a long read.'

The last chapter of Zuzu's Petals

Chapter 20

 

The leaves are out on the copper beech in Bingham Park, new and pink and tender, and the sweet cicely is frothing up in Whiteley Woods. It’s May, and I’ve been thinking about Pa.

This time last year he was in hospital and I was visiting him. He missed May, the loveliest month of all - the fresh bright green of the spring - because he was stuck in hospital. And I missed it last year because although I noticed it on the day he was buried, the rest of the month leading up to that was lost in thinking about him, visiting him, watching him disappear.

It has all come back to me with the beauty of the season and the birds singing at half past five in the morning. I have been feeling sad again. But this time, although I am missing Pa, I no longer have the questions swilling round my head about the rest of my life and about how I want to spend it.

I was going up to Wensleydale for Pa’s anniversary and managed to order some sweet peas from the flower shop in Broomhill for his grave. When I couldn't get any last year for his burial, I was upset and somehow getting some this year seemed to set that right. Last week when I rang the shop the man thought they would be £1 a stem and I dithered. He knew that was expensive and he said “It just depends how extravagant you want to be.” As it turned out, they were half the price he quoted.

On the way up the dale from the A1 I called in at the burial ground. I walked up to the grave, and the stone was still stark and new and horrid. And the black paint in the lettering was nasty. The bunch of sweet peas felt small. The grass was long, and there was still a long coffin-shaped mark in it.

I didn't stand there and talk to Pa. Partly, it’s the off-putting thought of the people who live in the old Meeting House behind, and partly it’s because I don't think he is still around. He isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere. I don’t believe in life after death, in spirits hanging around waiting to be talked to. The only life after death is in what the person has left in memories. And then there’s his deeds, his creations, his influence on his children and his genetic heritage. I see both of the latter in traits and physical characteristics in Megan and Steve, and I expect they see it in me. That is where the comfort is. There’s no comfort in going to the grave.

I didn’t know what Ma wanted to do for Pa’s anniversary. She never mentioned Pa, she was quiet all day. We did a bit of paperwork in the morning when I got there – sorting out her bills. She had an annual electricity statement which was impenetrable, so we took her off direct debit and put her back on quarterly payments.

I asked her if there were any consolations in being old.

“Having you children come and look after me,” she said. But that was all she could think of.

Megan and Ed arrived after lunch. I was pleased to see them. After drinking a cuppa and munching through a bowl of cherries that Megan had bought on Bristol market, we walked up to see Pa’s tree. It was showery and there was a cold wind.

In the evening Steve and Martine came over and we had roast beef and raspberry trifle. Ma had ordered a big piece of beef. She told me she had asked the butcher to her house especially to give him her order, not just rung up the shop.

Pa was not mentioned, apart from when Megan opened a bottle of pink champagne in the kitchen while she was cooking, and poured us all a glass, and I said “To Pa.”

Megan and Ed and Steve and Martine said “Yes, to Pa.”

Ma nodded, and said “Yes,” and took a sip.

Steve sharpened the carving knife and prepared to carve the joint.

“I’d better get this right or I’ll be in trouble.”

“Don't worry,” I said. “Now Pa’s not here, no-one’s going to complain about how you carve.”

Steve looked meaningfully at Megan’s back as she drained the potatoes at the sink.

She turned round and laughed and said “He lives on!”

After dinner she and I walked up to the gate on the Thoralby road, the one we walked up to on the same night last year, on the day he died. Then we walked down to the hotel, and back across the fields. I don't think Pa was mentioned.

At the cottage there is a tiny red stapler which lives in the two inch square box it came in, and on it Pa had written STAPLER in his fine strong capitals. Since he died, every time I’ve used the stapler, I have found it a comfort to see his writing. This time I was up at Hollycroft I went to get the stapler and Ma had scrawled Stapler over his writing in inky rollerball, completely obscuring that winning remnant of Pa - his writing. It was a trivial sentimental thing, but I showed it to Megan, and she understood.

I drove all the way up the Thornton Rust road to the nursing home to see the sweet cicely and the cow parsley along the roadside and to see if any lambs were playing on the road as they were last year.

There were no lambs. And the verges had less sweet cicely than the country lanes down here in the Mayfield Valley. On the way back I stopped at Pa’s tree. Then I drove to say goodbye to the Falls. I slowed the car down on Church Bank and wound down the van window and smelled the wild garlic in the woods. I could see the river without getting out of the car – it was a lovely colour – dark peaty brown with a creamy head of foam. Pa always commented on the colour of the river, and if there’d been a lot of rain he’d say, “It’s running a full pot.”

When I got home, I talked to Viv about Pa, and the gravestone, and about the fact that Ma didn’t mention Pa the entire time I was there, yet she seemed so pleased that Megan and I went up. She mentioned it so many times. She wanted to mark the day, yet didn’t talk about Pa, or about anything that wasn’t mundane. If Megan had not been there no-one would have mentioned Pa, and I would have found that hard.

Megan just rang me to tell me that there’s a jar on the top shelf in the cloakroom at Hollycroft with a label on, written by Pa - SALTPETRE. He bought it when he was planning to cure his own bacon. She said she had hidden the jar at the back of the shelf so that it wouldn’t catch Ma’s eye.

I’m sitting in the sunshine just now. I’m drinking tea, and eating parkin. I remember sitting here last summer on my steamer chair, feeling utterly wretched about Pa.

Now I am happy. And I think that Pa would be pleased.

 

lower case musings

You know how some people are described as 'picky eaters'? I have realised that I am a picky reader.

I just read 100 pages of The Russian Gentleman and then gave up. It had been recommended to me by two people in two separate book groups who said "Everyone in my book group loved this!" 

I just read The Offing - another book that people have made a fuss of - but I was not convinced. 

Liz has just lent me All among the barley and I've read a few pages from the middle and it looks promising. We'll see. People seem to think that because I go on about the wildflowers on the Trail, etc etc, and that I love being out in nature, that I like books awash with nature writing. I don't really. I love nature, but not nature writing. Give me action and dialogue - lots and lots of dialogue. Two sentences of description of anything is quite enough for me.

I just gave up on a book half way through because it was far too quiet for my taste and I was having to force myself to read it, and I turned to EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW YOU, which I have not reread since it was published two years ago,  and thought Hmm...is this too quiet too? I admit there is a lot of nature writing in it but that was for a particular reason - to demonstrate its healing power - but still, would I have kept reading the book if it had been written by someone else and been lent to me?

I am still reading it and skipping some of the nature (!!!) and now I'm thinking that Joe is creepy and that I should have made him attractive with no downsides apart from his infuriating refusal to talk about his past.

I can't find a photo of the book cover and I am feeling lazy so here is my study where I wrote the book(!)

I'm still troubled by our garden and what to do with it now I don't have the energy to make it all look neat and tidy and beautiful. I told Dave I'd seen a pretty painted sign on a garden gate near here reading "This is a bee-friendly garden" and suggested that we should have one too. If you tell people you care more about bees and insects than tidiness, they might be less judgmental.

"No,"  Dave said, "we should have a sign saying Garden owned by two old codgers who can't afford a gardener."

I think that might be the way to go.

I have seen some very funny things on Twitter this week, but I have a weird sense of humour so instead of sharing them with you and you going "What?!" I want to share this, because it is how I feel when I read the news every morning:

Having said that, I came across a lovely article this week called

Love, courage and solidarity: 20 essential lessons young athletes taught us this summer

You can read it here.

And now to paint. I've been struggling with an abstract painting all week and it is still not to my liking, so I am going to put it on one side, and start a painting of some limes and a margarita, or a jam jar full of nasturtiums. Both bring me joy.

I wish you a lovely weekend.

Our crocosmia lucifer

What brings you joy?

It's been far too easy lately to sink into a low level depression after reading the morning's news  - the climate crisis, the political state of the world, the shocking treatment of people in all kinds of distress, the corruption and inadequacies (now there's a mild word) of our disgusting government.

But this last week I found a way out. Dave and I have been watching an episode every night of Who do you think you are? - the programme that traces people's ancestors and their life stories. Many of these stories are moving and tragic, and I am left at the end of the programme thinking how fortunate I am to be here, now, to have my own particular life.

And there are other cheering things - both large and small.

1/  the 3000% raise in donations to the RNLI after criticism by an unpleasant former politician because the RNLI are rescuing asylum seekers and refugees in distress, those trying to cross the channel from France in inadequate boats. How wonderful to see such tangible evidence that there are many,  many people in the UK who want to help people fleeing war and persecution. 

2/  the huge success of the women's BMX riders at the Olympics. It makes me happy, not because they are team GB, but because they are daring and skilful and determined young women executing amazing feats on their bikes. Watching Bethany Shriever - who had to fund herself by crowdfunding - win her race was fabulous, but watching Charlotte Worthington's performance in the BMX freestyle brought tears to my eyes - Here.

3/  nearer to home by a few thousand miles - having a 30 minute facetime with Lux in Colorado who was 11 last week. What a joy she is.

4/   nearer still, the wildflowers on the Trail in the video I took from my bike, but I don't know why it's blurry...

5/   my sweet peas 

6/   the latest and last series of Atypical on Netflix, which is one of my favourite TV programmes. I thought it was finished and complete at the end of Series 3 but this final series has concluded the story perfectly. Atypical is a comedy drama (my favourite genre) and combines so many excellent characteristics I am going to have to think hard to list them all. Here are some: quirkiness, humour, sadness, insight, compassion, warmth, morality, challenge, love.

lastly

7/   making chocolate brownies and licking out the mixing bowl. Yum.

What brings you joy?

Image problems

What do you think of the new header photo?

Be honest.

(I've just realised that if you are reading this on a phone you might never see the header photo - so to deal with this problem, I'm putting it at the end of today's post.)

I used to change the header every time I did a new post but Blogger has now made that impossible for me to manage, so I have to pick just one and stick with it, and I've been puzzling over what to use. 

I thought this photo was right, but seeing it up there makes me feel exposed and uneasy. Also, I look like an eminent someone on an arts programme being asked for their opinion on a new biography of Proust. 

It doesn't look like someone who picks sweet peas in their pyjamas and wellies, who loves riding up the Trail on her bike, someone who likes watching Atypical and Grace and Frankie and Virgin River (although I have to say that the latest series of VR (3) is dire.)  

I do like the photo. I like it a lot. Isaac took it when he and my other two 'kids'  took me out for lunch on my 70th birthday, so there are lovely memories attached to it. But I don't like it up there.

So the problem is - what to choose?

All my header photographs have been seasonal, and specific to the month in which they appear. 

I'm veering towards this one of our lane:

Or this one of our garden:

I have to have it all decided asap, because Isaac starts a new job on Monday and I don't want to pester him with my non-urgent tech problems after that.

Before I go, here is my latest painting, just completed:

'Still missing'
Acrylic on canvas board 35 x 29 cms

And here is a quote from Marc Chagall that someone read out in Quaker meeting on Sunday. 

“If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope.”

I'm wondering what colour hope is, and what colour is love.

This is the current header photo for those who don't usually see the header:

Photo by Isaac Hepworth

Books and weeds

First of all, a big thank you to all of you who have suggested books I might enjoy. I have made a list of them and will be choosing my next read from the list, which will be as soon as I've finished The Citadel by A.J.Cronin (published 1937) which I fell into after hearing a dramatisation on Radio 4/Radio4e (I'm not sure which). 

I am gripped by it, and if you have never heard of it, it's a cracking read, and is credited with laying the foundation of the NHS a decade later. The latest edition has an introduction by Adam Kay, author of This is going to hurt. 

He says: "Read The Citadel and tell everyone you know: this is the world waiting for us if we don't look after the NHS. No pressure."

And now, my garden. 

It happens every summer. It's usually when the hardy geraniums have stopped flowering, and the crocosmia lucifer is out. 

Can you spot the weeds in this one?

And every year it seems worse than the last, though I think that might be subjective. What's happening? The couch grass and the convolvulus and even in places, brambles, are taking over. Also, the drive is covered in weeds:

and I despair. I despair because I have less and less physical energy with every passing year and what little I have I want to spend on cycling or walking, not weeding. 

And then I start wondering which border I can get rid of and put down to grass?

But I like flowers!

This year, however,  it feels as though there is a little leeway: we were urged not to mow our lawns in no-mow May, and this week a weed garden won the RHS gold prize at Tatton Park flower show, and we are all being urged to have wild spots in our gardens to cater for the bees and other insects.

A month ago I persuaded Dave - who mows the lawns and cuts the hedges and chops things down but does no other gardening - to leave the lawns, because they looked so pretty. This was our back lawn:

Photo by friend Michelle

I may never be in the village Open Gardens event, but no matter how uneasy I feel about my ill-kempt borders, I can tell myself the garden is helping to save the planet. 

So gold star to me.

Weekend thoughts

You know, for someone who is 71 and retired, you'd think there'd be no difference between a weekday and a Saturday, but I can't shrug off the distiction. It's deep in my head. 

Here I am, sitting in my pyjamas at 9.40 a.m. feeling relaxed and easy. Had it been a weekday I'd be feeling I should have been showered and dressed a couple of hours ago, and up and doing, but I can't escape this weekend feeling even though I haven't 'gone out to work' for years and years.

But I've been thinking about something else. If you read my last post and you saw the comments and my responses, it's clear what a fussy reader I am, how difficult I am to please, and how narrow are my tastes.

I have a theory that the older people become, the more like themselves they become. By that I mean that their distinctive personality characteristics become more and more exaggerated. I see it in my siblings. I can't say I see it in Dave because he has always been pretty extreme. 😉 (That's a wink emoji, Pete.)

So yes, I admit I am very choosy about what I want to read, and yet I have read more widely during this last year. I've read several memoirs for example, which I have always shied away from in the past, admittedly about subjects I've been particularly interested in - the experiences of ordinary non-fighting people in the second world war. 

But I have also noticed how impatient I've become with on-screen fiction. If the characters annoy me, I switch it off. I told you I'd given up Neighbours for that reason and switched to Last Tango in Halifax, didn't I? Well now I've got to a point where Gillian is beginning to piss me off big time. and it's not just her actions, it's also the way she expresses herself, or is it the actor's delivery? Who knows? I've given up on it.

So...I was wondering if this is an example of my becoming more and more like myself as I get older, i.e. more picky and more impatient, or whether there is another reason...

I think it's that the actions, the hopeless communications, the muddle, the cack-handedness, the ridiculous incompetence of our so-called government - added to their corruption and lies and lack of compassion -  makes me so angry that they have used up all of my short supply of patience, and I have none left to spend on characters in any kind of entertainment - in books or on-screen.

That is my conclusion. I rest my case.

And now, a propos of nothing, except that I'd like to leave on a sweet spot: you cannot have too many sweet peas:

All quiet on the home front

My big sister and her husband came to visit yesterday. They live in flat, flat Lincolnshire and she's been pining for hills and rivers and been unable to get up to Wensleydale this year, so I took them to my favourite local river, where we could walk in the shade. It was so lovely to see them. These days it feels more special than usual to spend time with family.

My sweet peas this year have been better than ever, and I can't decide if it's because of the weather patterns or the way I sowed the seeds. 

I put two loo roll insides in a large yoghurt carton and filled the whole thing with compost, and then sowed one seed inside each loo roll. That way the roots of the plants stayed separate. I know you can buy root trainers, and actually I had ordered some to try, but this worked just as well. 

I'm back to the lovely summer pattern of going out every morning to pick a bunch.

I finished my latest painting:

'Missing'
Acrylics on canvas board 30.5 x 25.5 cms

Does this heat make you lazy? I have a list of boring jobs on my desk that I look at each day - stuff like choosing a new electricity provider, and finding an internet company that will give better speeds than Plusnet for a house on the edge of a village - and think -  I'll sort those out tomorrow.

The heat also turns my brain to mush. If I have a normal busy morning, by 3 o'clock in the afternoon I am wiped out, too tired to even draw or read. Yesterday I was so bushed I lay on the sofa and - I'm disappointed to admit - I watched Neighbours after a month's abstention. Oh dear.

I am between books and need your help, and I'm asking because in the past you've come up with some terrific book suggestions. Having read and relished Standard Deviation, which was not just hugely entertaining but also thought provoking, I bought the author, Katherine Heiny's new book. But I don't care about the central character and have given it up. 

Please, friends, give me some suggestions. I want fiction that is accessible but has some depth. No crime, sci-fi, or magic realism, nothing harrowing and nothing impossibly wordy (e.g. books by Barbara Kingsolver.) 

Please help.

Meanderings

Well, it may feel like 'Freedom Day' to some people, but it feels like 'back to square one and a half day' to me.  I saw the tag 'Chaos Pirate Johnson' today on Twitter and on Saturday Marina Hyde coined the phrase 'this septic isle.' They sum up my feelings.

But...

I did have a lovely time away, and I've come home feeling very lazy, which is why you've had to wait this long for a post. 

There are definitely advantages to going for a walk on your own. You can stop and rest whenever you want to without losing face; you can stop in the middle of a field of beautiful grasses and sit for as long as you like, trying to get the perfect shot:

You can sit in the shade by the river and finish your Anne Tyler book. That river - the river Ure - has such a delicious and distinctive summer scent it takes me straight back to being a child when we camped by it for our summer holidays.

It's a problem when you come to a bridge across a stream, though, 

because it's not much fun playing Pooh sticks on your own:

But then it's OK to walk up to the same spot at the end of the village everyday to try to get that perfect shot of Lady Hill:

And here's one from a new vantage point:

I also went for a long walk with my brother Jonty, who took a day off work to spend it with me:

You can tell from this photo how seldom either of us indulges in taking selfies...but who cares...we got together, after so long apart. What a joy.

Picture postcard

 Pictures from Wensleydale for you…

I’m off!

Hooray! I am well enough to drive to Wensleydale for a three day break. My second holiday since March 2020. The first was four nights in Northumberland. Dave thinks it’s odd I am going on my own because I am such a sociable person and although I’d rather be with a friend, I am desperate to get away. He doesn’t understand my intense need for a change of scene. These days he only goes away if a narrowboat is involved.

It’s the first time I’ve been away and staying on my own since 2006 when I drove to Yosemite from San Francisco, found a note on the B and B door addressed to me telling me the hosts had had to go away and would I make myself at home? Oh, and not to leave any food in my car or bears might come and rip off the doors so they could get it.

I’ll post again when I get there. Bon voyage to me!

The quiet life

 What to blog about when I live such a quiet life?

You will see how quiet it is when I tell you that the most exciting thing that happened this week was getting an email on Thursday from Duolingo. 

Two years ago (to the month) I was buffing up my French to go on a trip to France with Chrissie, and I lost marks when I translated 'pharmacie' as 'chemist shop.' I was so annoyed I emailed them to say that in the UK, 'chemist shop' is a perfectly acceptable translation of pharmacie. (I actually just say 'chemist' but I thought that might be too radical for the US-based Duolingo.)

Yay! I have changed the world!

Fortunately, Quakers don't have anything but names and dates on their headstones, so 'changing the world of Duolingo' will not be on mine.

The other bit of trivia I have to share is that I was upset to lose my favourite mask, made for me by my grandson, who will be 17 this month. I was upset because masks will be in vogue for residents of Hepworth Towers until, I'm guessing - well, as long as we still have a government that ignores the science - until next year at least. I needed a new one and bought two from Every Doctor UK, a doctor-led campaigning organisation fighting for a better NHS for every doctor and every patient.

We

The masks are triple layered and comfortable and great for wearing with glasses, and they are supplied by a British collective of textiles workers who have been left unemployed in their former roles by the COVID-19 pandemic. You can buy them without the labels if you like, and they also have lots of lovely patterned fabrics if that's your bag. (Who me? An aging hippie?)

Here is a reminder of what my grand-daughter Cece (then 8) said last year in a video she made on her own with no supervision:

Third bit of trivia - I finished the painting of the view into my study window:

Looking into sunshine
Acrylic on canvas board, 37 by 55 cms

Fourth item - I was unwell yesterday, and so wobbly on my feet for some reason that Dave suggested I might need a zimmer frame. 

'And don't worry about your trip to Wensleydale next week,' he said. 'If you're not better I can drive you up and dump you there.'

Such tender words.

Lastly I went down Miller's Dale again and took this video for you:

That's all, folks. Have a great weekend. I'm off to a tiny local art gallery for a little sustenance.