Happy Easter

Dead Bird

A chaffinch just fell out of the sky floundered around all lobsided like he had a broken leg and then died.

V&A visit

Unofficial trip to the V&A to see the ceramics galleries - getting inspiration for next terms class. Waiting on the steps out front in the blazing sun of the hottest day of the year so far there was a sharing of working in Harrods stories (some of my colleagues have done it).

A friend of one of them had spent some time serving a very difficult woman buying a broom. When she had finally made her choice, he asked her, would madam like it wrapped or is she riding it home? After which he was fired.

Vulgarity

It's a sunny day I'm waiting for the bus. A young man walks up talking to his friend on the phone. They are having a man-to-man relationship talk. ...not into the relationship thing... Finally he makes his judgement, to be honest with you, you sound a bit pussy-whipped, he proclaims, and immediately is embarrassed, oops, maybe I shouldn't say that in the proximity of... I imagine he said women but he lowered his voice.

Book series

Tips for authors planning to write a book series:

1. Make sure the story is big enough for multiple books
2. Don't assume that to read as a stand alone book you need to repeat all the main points of all the previous books
3. The third book should not double in size - 400 pages is plenty - bigger is difficult to carry around

I have just finished the last book in the series by Jean Auel - I was compelled to read the whole series despite the fact the books got thicker and thicker and more and more repetitive. I wanted to get to the end of the story. Now I've got there the journey could have been shorter.

Tuesday evening

I'm unreasonably tired, thinking of going to bed, and its only 10pm. It was chilly today - having painted my toenails for wearing sandals and gotten the slightest beginnings of a tan going, the weather changed and had to put it all away.  Cee-Lo Green was on Jules Holland, now the lead singer of Glasvegas is wearing one of those sleeveless shirts with too large arm holes that open down to the waist (hate them - you can see a bit too much body).

Early summer

Its a hot day.
The remenants of last night's first barbeque of the year are in the firepit.
Cherry blossom drifts down from the tree next door. Glorious against a pure blue sky.
Last of the late daffoldils are starting to fade. The early tulips are fully open revealing their green and white inner colour.
The grass is long.
Birds are chirruping, and  bathing. It'll soon be time for the fledglings to emerge.
Tiny holly blue, and white, butterflies flutter around.
Love the peace of the garden in the weekday (working from home).

 Eat Cake

I'm having a craving for cake.
Coffee and walnut cake.
With a thin layer of coffee flavoured butter icing.
It needs to be home made, not a dry shop bought version.
Perhaps I should make one, but I can't really be bothered. That lethargy doesn't stop the craving however. I'm trying to distract it by watching CSI (first it was Miami, now its New York) but these are now all blending into the same programme and they aren't distracting enough.

Bruce Grove to Liverpool Street

A young couple sit on the train going to work.  He looks boyish with a man's haircut, tired eyes and a smattering of facial hair. She is serene and quietly pretty. Like side characters in a costume drama, playing maids and kitchen boy from downstairs. They are not speaking to each other but occassionally she turns from looking out of the window and smiles at him. It causes him to smile back and his face brightens. Neither of them read, paper or book. He is listening to one headphone.

Song Cycle for Japan

Pops and I went to St Mary's Church, Upper Street, to listen to a song cycle for Japan. The music was haunting, played on a baby grand piano with two voices - female and male. The church setting was contemplative. Outside the large clear glass windows were some huge plain trees with those balls of seeds, against a blue sky, rays of sun shone in.

The lyrics made me think about the images that stuck in my head from the news footage.

• People running out of offices while rubble falls from skyscrapers crashing onto the pavement.
• A white car drives along a straight road, behind it the tsunami wave crashes together from both sides of the road, large and blackened. Its haunting that they keep saying the wave is travelling at 500 miles per hour. I think about the car often, did it escape? It doesn't seem possible.
• The wave rolls over the town's defences, overcoming walls and houses, surrounded they fold in on themselves like paper.
• Aftermath - two buildings left standing in a town with a population of 10,000. The rest of it looks like tindersticks.
• Ships beached in the centre of flattened towns.
• A child with her mother and brother, searching the rubble of their former home, runs over with a photograph in a frame. The frame is broken and the glass is muddy, the mother takes the photograph out and wipes it with her hand. It shows her son and daughter with their father. A tear escapes from her eye and rolls down her cheek. Their father is a rescue worker, she explains, we haven't seen him since the wave came. We hope he is safe.
• An old man stooped with age, aided by a walking stick, climbs off the rubble with a rescue worker.

The nuclear smoke and steam from the reactor steals the news away from the human stories as the world becomes afraid of the wider impact. I wish they would return to the human stories. There was one news item that showed a road just after the quake - ripped up, jagged - and now - already resurfaced and fixed. The one person we knew who was in Japan at the time of the quake got back sooner than expected. He was truely amazed at the way the Japanese handled it - calm, orderly despite the terrifying situation.

Road Surface

Rye Lane is being resurfaced. They've been at it for months. Today the barriers extend in both directions for a long stretch of road. The lack of surface is not preventing it's use by cyclists and pedestrians who have opened the barriers at strategic places along the missing road surface. People will find the path of least resistance.

Supermoon



Look at the supermoon, someone texted to me. Couldn't see it until I got off the bus at Tottenham Swan. Bails had told me it was going to be bigger than normal due to it being nearer than its been for 20 years, or something. It didn't seem nearer while I was looking at it but it was incredibly bright - shining, almost too bright to look at as it reflected the sun back at us. Trying to distinguish its surface through the naked eye. When I got home I  looked out the back but it was too far over the roofs to see. It cast a distinctive shadow over the garden, almost light.

Ceramics Class

It is the term of functionality. Don't normally care too much about function, but someone commissioned me to make a water jug. So I've made 3 of them - they are a sort of set with different arrangements of handles and using the same method of decorating. The rest of the class and department seem to be having a teapot theme - many teapots being made. Someone said pinchpot teapots and I decided in a spare moment to make one. Once I started I didn't make just one but two. Like the second one better with its pinched handle, spout and lid.

May or may not make some more.

In London the sun is shining

Birds are nesting - collecting bits and bobs to soften the holes in the roofs nearby. Its all go again. They are back to bathing collectively in the birdbath. The black cat from across the gardens is on the neighbours shed roof watching. He likes to watch. Grass is growing. Buds are growing fat, ready to open. Daffodils waft in the wind.

In Dundee its raining and snowing. Sis and her new dog have been drenched twice. She was hoping someone else would take him out for his evening constitutional.

In Japan I can't imagine. A friend of a friend was on a business trip in Tokyo, finally made contact today - very shaken up but amazed at the way people reacted in such a calm manner. The pictures have been astounding - terrifying watching the tsumani wave rolling over the fields, tearing down buildings as if they were made of paper, rolling on and on over roads, airports, tossing cars and rubble around like so much flotsum and jetsum. Scared for the person who was driving their car along the road on the news while two sides of the wave slid over the road behind them.

Bus Journey

Behind me is a man on his way home from the office - he's reading and his breath smells stale, partially masked by coffee but not entirely.

Ahead of me a woman is having throat problems and keeps retching and burping.

Altogether it's making me feel sick.

Ceramics Class

 

Aim was to make a waterjug. It had to hold water, be able to be used for pouring, so not to big to be too heavy. It sort of has the puffed out chest of a pigeon or pheasant or something. One handle was never going to be enough!

Spring

Softly the sun rises and shines, takes the chill of the winter. Crocuses are out, daffodils in bud. Grass is long. Birds are preparing for chicks. Sitting outside with sunshine on the face for the first time of the year. Looking forward to the new season.

I recently bought a new frying pan but its much larger than it looked in the shop and is too big for the dishwasher and too heavy to toss a pancake with. So instead pancakes were turned rather than flipped. Sort of took the fun out of it.

Purchase

I bought two prints from a Petitou exhibition by Nicholas Frith. A stag and a lonesome woodcutter. They remind me of a print of Dad's of two innuit fishermen similar to some of these.

I got tonnes

You know that saying - I've got shedloads (of, for example, books, or something) - in my head I always imagine enough to fit in a shed (its not an infinite number but it is a lot). Someone today was saying they have a problem when the phrase is used because they can't decide whether the shed is a noun or a verb. I've never before realised that actually the use of shed in this phrase is a verb. It doesn't refer to enough to fit into a shed - it refers to an  amount that has been shed from a lorry. A shed load. Doh. BIG doh. I astound myself sometimes. How have I got to be 40 and not realised this yet?

Paperclips

How many paperclips are in circulation at any one time? I think I have bought a packet of paperclips perhaps once in my entire school and working life but always manage to have an overflowing collection of them in an assortment of useful sizes. At a meeting today someone collected a single clip off the desk at the end and said I'll have that it's a resource. Which it is. But who supplies them all if we don't actually buy them?