Of course, I really should spend some time in the house soon. It's not going to decorate itself after all. We've got a plasterer coming on Tuesday to do a final awkward bit, and I'll do a DIY update after that.
Looking back at my pictures from the last few weeks, it's quite clear I've spent most of the time I've not been at work wandering the countryside. The weather's been good here, and I can't bear to be stuck in this dusty, half decorated house. After work, and at the weekend, I'm just desperate to go outside. This was a brief stop on the way back from a little market town with a friend. I've driven past here countless times, but never stopped and walked down the path a little way. A bit of clambering (and a bit of swearing) and we found ourselves quite high up and looking out quite a long way. Another day, we went to another market town looking for a new house. When we go somewhere new, we like to wander about and see what's close. I'd happily live near here. It was pretty hilly, mind you. Next, our trips took a less scenic (but more tasty) turn, with cake and a fair in a park. One evening after work, as the light faded, we headed out to the peak district. There was no epic sunset, and there were a party of scouts whose shouts echoed around the valley, but it was still peaceful. Yesterday the sun shone, and when a friend suggested a trip out after tea, we jumped at the chance. We hadn't eaten, so we took slices of pizza and a bit of cake, and found a 'beach' (or as close to a beach as we get round here) by a reservoir. We skimmed stones and watched as the sun set over the hills. Sometimes even just going out for an hour can feel like a rest. After work, it feels like a whole other day.
Of course, I really should spend some time in the house soon. It's not going to decorate itself after all. We've got a plasterer coming on Tuesday to do a final awkward bit, and I'll do a DIY update after that.
2 Comments
After my slow start to the year on the reading front, things have picked up over the last couple of months, partly because I've been on holiday, and one of my favourite things to do on holiday is to head straight to a charity shop and pick up a large pile of books. So here goes - what I've been reading in March and April.
Running Free: A Runner's Journey Back to Nature (Richard Askwith) This book sat on my shelf for a good while as the opening chapter irritated me and I couldn't get past it. I thought it was going to be all 'isn't it terrible that people wear GPS watches', and I quite like my GPS watch, and didn't want to feel told off. However, I'm glad I got past that as the rest of the book was actually quite charmingly enthusiastic about running in fields and listening to the birds. Made me want to run a bit more. Purple Hibiscus (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) I found this via a friend, who suggested this Ted Talk about the dangers of telling a single story about a place and the people who live there (for example 'Africa = famine'). Do go and listen to it. I took on board what the speaker said, and decided to start with her own first novel, and got her second out of the library at the same time as I know what I'm like for finding an author and reading everything they've ever written. This is an evocative story of a young Nigerian girl who ends up living in her aunt's house, much poorer but free from her abusive father. In places it's quite disturbing, but overall positive. This is the book she refers to in the talk, which someone told her wasn't 'authentically African'. Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) This is the author's second, much more involved novel, and tells the story of the outbreak of war in Nigeria in the late 1960s. This is a place and period of history I knew nothing about, and I always learn about historical events better through novels and the stories of individual people. This gives a vivid picture of the lives of people both before and during the war and the famine that followed. Highly recommended. Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (Laura Thompson) I don't quite know how I ended up with this book, which is a brief biography of the six upper class Mitford sisters in the 1920s and beyond. Fascinating, disturbing, and rather odd. The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (Sue Townsend) I'm still not sure what I thought of this. Rather daft, although I confess I identified with the desire to just stop doing things and take to my bed at the start. Increasingly sad and disturbing (and quite ridiculous) towards the end. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (Maya Angelou) This is the kind of book you can't really write until you get into your sixties I don't think - full of tales and advice and snippets of wisdom acquired over a long eventful life. I read the first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography at school, and read the other six volumes since - but I've just discovered all manner of other things I didn't know about her in this wikipedia entry. Incidentally, she was good friends with one of the Mitford sisters. Fruit of the Lemon (Andrea Levy) Another holiday charity shop find, and continuing my theme of reading in detail about individual lives, whether real or fictional. This one is fictional, but is about a young woman being sent from London to Jamaica to learn about her family and background. So a fairly random assortment, as usual. I'm not much of a literary critic... but it's proving interesting to keep track of what I'm reading over the months and it's making me more aware of finding new authors I think, and encouraging me to put aside more time to read, which can only be a good thing. I didn't spend much time in the garden in April. Between a work conference, my cycling trip and our week in Northumbria, I was away for almost three weeks of April, and the rest I seemed to spend packing and unpacking and repacking, and preparing to go away and getting used to being home again. I did sneak out to take a few photographs in the sunshine right at the end of April though. Things have taken a rather tulipy turn out there. When my mum visited in the autumn, we spent a rather chilly couple of hours haphazardly planting bulbs, and our lack of planning and coordination is very evident. Tulips have popped up all over the place - pink, bright red and frilly, and these rather fetching dark purple raggedy-edged things. I often think I should take a more coordinated approach to garden planning, and have some kind of vague colour scheme that I stick to, but this is such a small garden that you can't commit to too much of one thing in case it doesn't work, so every year I end up with a slightly different higgledy piggledy look. It suits me. The neighbours may well laugh, I don't care.
We harvested a small bit of rhubarb in April too - just enough to top up a crumble with the rest being from a friend's allotment. The gooseberry, redcurrant and blackcurrant bushes are looking like they're in for a good summer, and the first flower has appeared on the fuchsia. I've finally pulled up the ornamental cabbages, which went to seed several weeks ago, but the bedding plants (violas?) I planted last August are still going strong, although they're starting to get a bit leggy now. A trip to the garden centre might be in order soon. |
Archives
March 2018
Categories
All
|