A quick hello...

I can't help sharing two things with you: Bob (my son) passed his driving test today. I was extra relieved by this because he had to take it in my car and I was late picking him up from work for the appointment, so he was wound quite tight by the time we arrived at the test centre.

The other thing is that as well as working on my portfolio (which is coming along incrementally), I have also been dealing with six stone of pork from one of these:


and am in the process of making the belly and part of the back into bacon. Most of it will be in the cure for another few days to ensure it lasts the winter. But we got to taste the sweet-cure today.



I made one of my staples, Carbonara, and it was delicious: it tasted just like Carbonara, with bacon tasting just like bacon.


So although I haven't yet got any work done today it was a good day.

Break Break

I'm interrupting my self imposed blogging break* to ask you a question.

After a year of being redundant Stevie has gone into the paintball business, with a friend. Understandably he was a little trepidatious but having made the decision to go ahead he has thrown himself into it with enthusiasm. Now he has things to do and places to go and is, as they say, out from under. There are breaks between the Geiger counter's beeps.

So when he said, 'do you want to come to the wood-yard with me?'
I said, 'OK', rather than, 'what?'

Amongst all the old sheds, planks, machinery, and sawdust were these:



Clump.


Single stem.


Bud.


A lone pale one.

I don't know what they are but feel I should. So can anyone tell me?


*While I'm here: thank you for all your encouraging comments, understanding, and general firm friendliness.

Closed for the Season

I have a big, important (to me) project to get done, and I really want to do a good job, but I am easily distracted. In fact I positively seek distraction, and the more important I feel something is the more I seem to go looking for reasons not to do it. Apparently I'm not alone, lots of people behave in exactly the same way, and there are all number of theories as to why: fear of failure is one and another is something to do with self sabotage, I can't remember the details. Anyway, I need to minimize the number of distractions that lay claim to my time and get down to some serious work or I'll fail, and that will make me miserable.

I'm sure you've guessed, blogging is the biggest consumer of my time. I love nothing more than a bit of idle chat and this being able to just drop in on anyone, at anytime, without moving from my seat, is far too tempting; so I'm going to put the hems on it for a while. I will still drop in on everyone from time to time, I may read but not comment, and I may post the odd thing but probably not. Oh, I don't know! I just know that if I don't give this thing my best shot then I'll have only myself to blame for buggering it up, and that would be stupid.

So, that's it then, I'll see you when I see you, but here's a cup-cake to show how much I care:

Dilemma

I am fuming at the moment, the term 'incandescent with rage' doesn't even begin to cover it. So, in order for me not to embarrass myself by delivering an unthought-through tirade on the inherent evils of an aging capitalist system, I present a rather mild dilemma.

I like to have beautiful things around me but not inert or useless beauty, I like my stuff to perform too. Thus I have a teapot that is not only quite lovely it keeps tea hot and pours without dripping too; solid wood kitchen counters that act as a huge chopping board and are easy to clean as well as looking just the way I like, and a computer that not only does everything I could possibly require of it but is an object of such stylish good looks I have been know to take photographs of it. I could go on, but let's just say that whatever I bring into the house has to be both attractive, to me, and functional. Even the art I collect provides inspiration as well as looking just so.

But now I find myself with a conflict of form over function interests. I use a lot of pencils, and so keep a pot of them ready sharpened on my desk. Because they are on view I'm, let's say, particular about their appearance and so am always looking for pretty pencils. Finding them is not easy, but recently I found myself in a shop that sold 'vintage' pencils, some of which were these:



Gorgeous, huh? I bought all they had which was only 8. They are several of my favourite things: old, French and painted with green, as well as being pencils. I don't know exactly how old they are but they have that certain quality that seems to develop over time, and they have never been used.



My dilemma is this: they have survived in this condition for some time, if I sharpen and use them they will fairly quickly cease to exist and I won't have them anymore, and for all I know they might be the last of their kind in the whole world. So, should I keep them as mere objects of loveliness or use them as they were intended to be used?

Poetic Timing

Five minute poems keep popping up all over the blogopolis and, because I can't help myself I've done one too, now. I think I might have cheated though, as although I timed myself to the minute I couldn't help adding a comma after my time was up, so it was maybe five minutes and twenty seconds. It's untitled because thinking up a title would really have pushed the limits. But here is a photo of the inspiration which can be a kind of title:




This table has been painted every shade of flag,
now, left to the elements its layers crack
and flake off in little curls like chocolate sundae decoration.

United nations’ disintegration, rusty
patches, like bald earth, spread,
and lichens push out like forests
reclaiming for the natural world
one wonky garden trestle.

Closer

I have been asked by Titus to take the book nearest to me, turn to page 161 and cite the 5th complete sentence. The book nearest to me is Nick Laird’s On Purpose which is a very slim book of poems that only goes up to page 65.



The next nearest is difficult to determine as I have a small shelf just above my desk for reference books, supposedly, and there are about four books there which look to be exactly the same distance from me. Whatever book I choose I will have to bend the rules a little: either cite the 5th sentence of the last page of the Nick Laird, or, the stipulated sentence of not quite the nearest* book.

The other thing I could do is choose the book that is nearest to my reading chair. So not the book that was nearest when I read Titus’s request which was there, between my keyboard and my monitor, because it only just arrived in the post and that is where I unwrapped it, but the one nearest to where I actually sit and read. But that itself poses a problem.

The chair sits between this:



and this:



I am a bit of a dipper when it comes to reading and so am currently flitting between most of these books. Not The English Passengers, it being a novel I am waiting for a quiet, undisturbed stretch of time, to give myself up to it. As I haven’t read this it’s quite tempting to choose it and get to know one sentence, but that could ruin the story. I’ll unwittingly fill in the gaps and then it won’t live up to expectations. I'm sure it's much better than my imaginings could ever be, but that won't stop me anticipating what I know happens, and thus not pay proper attention to what does happen. I've spoilt many a good book in this way, and had umpteen spoilt by reviews too. Best not do that then.

Titus did say she chose me (as one of her five people to pass the baton on to) because she needs more Nietzsche, and, as luck would have it, there is a book about Nietzsche in the running: Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature. This is the only secondary text on Nietzsche that I’ve managed to get all the way through, it’s a really good read: well argued and not even remotely pompous. It lives just above my head – literally and metaphorically.



Here is the 5th sentence of page 161:

The narrative that relates [the past] to the present is altered, and even the accidents in our past can be turned into actions, into events for which we are willing to accept responsibility (“Thus I willed it”), and which we are therefore willing to repeat.

Got that?

I should pass this on to five others now, but everyone else seems to have already been nominated, so I'll squish that rule a little too and say: if there is anyone out there who hasn't been tagged and would like to do this (it's an easy post after all), here is your cue.


*I've just reread the rules and they don't say 'nearest' but 'most handy' which could have made for a completely different post: most handy as in most 'to hand', ie nearest, or most handy as in most useful, and if the latter for what aspect of life? Thank goodness I misremembered because I'd have tortured you with this one.

Eternal Sunshine of the Student's Mind

I have found the secret of happy housewifery and it looks like this:


Taking time out from my writing to deal with chores, some of which are created because I choose to live with someone for whom flakes of croissant on the couch are no deal at all ( let along a big one), has always felt like an indulgence. There are more important things to do than make the bed or clean the loo; wash the dishes or dust the books; vacuum, scrub, polish or iron. And standing at the kitchen table rubbing butter into flour until it looks like wet sand, adding just enough iced, acidified water to bring it all together, leaving it to rest for at least an hour, and then going back to roll it out and line a pie dish, when there are perfectly acceptable ready to use packs of frozen pastry available in any supermarket, and it is only me in this house who notices the difference, has felt bordering on the insanely spoilt. But now as I do these things I can, at the same time, at least feel like I am making an effort to learn my craft.

Why I didn't think of it before I don't know. This beautiful machine has never felt less of a gadget and more of a tool. Here is a selection of my current listening:


The bloody marvellous Ted: lifting onions
in the rain and searching out a suitable place
for them to dry has taken on new meaning.


Because Anglo-Saxon is the tap root of my poetic
sensibility I need to understand more about it.
Being able to learn the wordhoard as I peel eggs is,
quite frankly, a revelation.


Fifteen CDs worth of pure joy. All of
Seamus Heaney's poems read by
himself. The more I clean, the more
I'll absorb his genius.