Spending time worrying about whether I have covid means I have not really thought about all the other bugs out there. They can be transmitted differently, for instance by touching surfaces. I think covid is spread more by breathing in droplets.
Anyway, bam! I have got a bad cold or virus, and as many of these haven’t been around as much because people were not interacting or being in close contact with one another. We are all more susceptible to the risks of other diseases now. You might have immunity to one illness, but if you are not in contact with it frequently then it can be worse when you get it again. What fun! Sniffles…..
Our new phone turned up, not as good as the original one, its lighter and looks “generic”, the screen isn’t coloured and has no logo. Clearly a cheaper value, but it works. We had to move a cupboard to get at the electric socket to plug it in. That meant moving several years worth of books, old letters, ornaments, trinkets and tranklements. I found a few things I thought I had lost….. I also unearthed the paper shredder… Might be useful!
Then… Deep breath, inputting numbers. Each one by hand. The old phone would not release the numbers I had on it. So I had to look them up on my mobile and transpose them onto the land-line. The trouble was that I wasn’t sure what had been on the land-line so I may have added a few more from my mobile than I needed to. But the problem is the new phone has automatic call barring, so I might have blocked some friends if I hadn’t copied them. First World problem? Yes. But hubby ended up like a caver underneath the cupboard trying to work out where the plug socket was. The cats enjoyed exploring the space too…
Pink and red flowers popping open like fireworks, following the curve of the leaves as they sprout. Some of them have flowered, some are open now and some are in bud… How do they know to flower? Day length. Apparently if you move a Christmas cactus about too much it may drop its flowers. I’m not sure if that’s true or a gardening myth. I do know you can break a few leaves off and put it in water and it will send out water roots, you can plant them up. Some of these (cactuses cactii?) were propogated from my grandmother’s plants forty years ago. X Nrxt- Easter Cactuses.
When the sum rose this morning it was on the shortest day of the year. Now the days up here in the Northern Hemisphere will slowly start to lengthen again. At first at a minute or two a day, but gradually a few more minutes around spring time. Then as the Summer solstice approaches the number of minutes slows down. Finally after that the process goes into reverse and the days begin to wane again. So the great cycle of light and dark tumbles along North and South. Only on the equator are day and night lengths balanced out. The cause? Earth is tipped at an angle, so for six months of the year one half of the planet gets more light than the other (which also proves the Earth is a globe).
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Blank. A blank stare, my face in the mirror this morning. Still feeling like all the energy has been sucked out of me with this horrible cough. I used a tiny hand mirror so the face is distorted, it was like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together!
Filtered from an original black and white drawing.
You can use digital filters to play with original drawings. It’s something I do occasionally to see how the image will look if it’s altered. There are so many different styles that you can use. So many apps out there that offer different filters.
I did this drawing a couple of months ago, I want to get out and do more, but the cost of living means things are getting a bit to expensive. I paint and draw because that’s what I have to do. I don’t necessarily think about selling things and making money. If and when anything happens to me there will be a house full of art that needs sorting out! ❤️
I’m fed up. My chest is wheezing and if I go out in the cold it gets worse. Thankfully the weather warmed up a bit today, but my voice is croaky, like a box of frogs. It had dropped so low I even recorded it! I could have been a bass singer, even basso proffundo! Given that my range is generally an alto (contralto) it was quite disturbing to hear the noise I was making. I was due to go out on Monday afternoon to sing with the Mystery Singers at a local park (I’d already missed singing on Saturday) and again in the evening to go Carol Singing around our local pubs. It’s an annual thing that the Mystery singers do on the evening of the Monday before Christmas. Not for me this year. Apparently a few of the others have had the bug too. I’m really fed up.
Sunday’s #bandofsketchers prompt was elegant. My elegant idea was to draw a sewing pattern with a figure in a dress. I was inspired by 1970’s patterns which had elegant ladies sketched onto the sewing pattern cover. But my drawing does not really get the feel. It’s more like something I would have drawn as a teenager! I’m also showing my age. I’m sure I had a stripey skirt a bit like this, that flared out when you moved.
I couldn’t sleep last night and watched a few short adaptations of some M. R. James ghost stories, including one called the Mezzotint. The writer who adapted them is called Mike Gatiss and is well known for his involvement in the Sherlock series of detective mystery TV shows and other clever stories.
I realised that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story! Sounds strange but I think of it as a Christmas story and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside rather than the slight weirded out shudder I get from ghost stories at this time of year. But then I prefer a taut, spooky, tension building story any day to a horror film, all lumbering zombies and nightmarish vampires. The ones where people Always run upstairs towards the danger instead of out the front door and to the safety of the police station (I mean a British police station, no guns, no odd sheriff who arrests you instead of looking for the real culprit, no hidden secret). No I prefer the subtle horror of a tap that continues to drip even after the lead piping connecting it to the mains water has been severed by a hacksaw… Or the gradual encroachment of a garden full of roses with sharp thorns and a deadly scent that can envelope an unwary new tenant attempting to cut back the thorny undergrowth.
And why do they put on these spooky little horrors at this time of year? Is it the lengthening hours of dark, dank, cold, mist and fog? The snow falling so that tracks can be left but then fade before an investigation can find them in the morning? Subtle screams muffled by an unseasonably rising tide? Its like a box of dark chocolates, with Evil centres.
I am quite particular in what I prefer. No evil dead films. More sneaking spooks, less fangs, more clues.
Mallaband-Brown 