New paintings and regular art updates.
No presents hanging in stockings
No orange in the toe of the sock
There’s no chocolate or dolls
No perfume, or jigsaw puzzle
Sympathy cards replace Christmas ones.
The poinsettia is still in the shop
Your present has gone to a friend
We won’t open one each before breakfast
Old traditions wrung out
New ones yet to start.
Meanwhile I wait for snow or reindeer
Or Christian meditation and carols.
Who knows what happens next.
Shrodingers Cat has more idea
Of the future than I do.
Symmetrical tree with lights and stained glass windows. Still loving playing with photos and art.
In other news I’m lucky to have so many friends. Things are happening and I’m like a boulder in a raging river, being bashed all over the place, but people keep throwing me lifelines and I feel like things should (not saying will) be alright. Meanwhile I have to keep occupied.
If you’re in the area why not come to our concert in a few weeks time. You’ll be supporting Penkhull Players and our plans to put on another pantomime in the future. We are practicing ancient and modern songs, there will also be solos and poems. Its going to be fun.
Our choir sang at the switch on of Christmas lights tonight. We sang for about twenty minutes and included traditional carols and other seasonal songs.
The only problem though was the traffic! It felt like hundreds of cars were on the way to the venue. Everyone was driving in the right hand lane as we had to turn right at a roundabout onto the venue. Our choir leader had a asked for designated parking, but was told there would be plenty of spaces. Unfortunately half the city seemed to be fighting for them!
We were dropped off while my friend went to find somewhere to park the car. We had to fight our way through a packed crowd to get to the stage, so when we had finished our set we decided to listen to a couple of songs from the next act, then get going. Unfortunately this meant walking to the far end of the site and climbing over a low fence. When we finally made it to the car all the vehicles around us were in a stationary queue. The cars were moving a foot or two every few minutes. I think we would still be there if a man controlling the traffic explained there was a back road off the site! It took us one and a quarter hours to drive 400 yards!
Despite the traffic chaos, I think we did a great job, we were well appreciated and I’m glad we did it.
Singing reindeer bringing some cheer…
We went off to a garden centre today to get some pyracantha and roses to add to our hedge, we are bulking it up because it looks like there was another attempt last night to get in. I feel like we are under seige.
Hubby nailed some fence boards back in place and we also bought a lot of chicken wire to go above the bamboo screening we have put in. Spiky Pyracantha will go next to all this. Making it more robust.
We heard Christmas music as we were searching for plants, and these animatronic reindeer made me laugh and cheered me up!
It’s September, obviously time
For Christmas mince pies!
The Winter Solstice
Is three months away!
How many sweet desserts
Will be eaten before the season?
We are in mists and mellow fruitfulness
Autumn just begun, not winter yet…
Not Angels and jingle bells!
Eat by date?
Best before 7th October!
Will be spoiled by Christmas!
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
Christmas carols bring tears to my eyes. I can’t explain why. Some affect me more than others. Hark the Herald Angels sing, oh come all ye faithful and oh little town of Bethlehem particularly. Choral music especially when it’s in close harmony is wonderful.
I think its from hearing them in childhood, their sentiment stuck with me. That gentle music touched me. Sung at school and church. The music raises my spirits.
I know that when I hear the Christmas service of nine lessons and carols on the radio I have to stop and listen to the beautiful sweet voices singing wonderfully. I love going Carol singing with friends and that can make me feel teary. I can’t really say any more than that.
What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why?
I don’t really have a favourite game, but chess has become a way of socialising with a friend.
We only just started playing this week, but I found I enjoyed the challenge, and after ten years of not playing it, it made my brain work overtime! My friend is quite good and I was surprised how evenly matched we are.
I’d like to get better at it, but I don’t have the ability to think several moves ahead, I’m more of an artist, looking for patterns in the next move or so. It also means I can make random moves that surprise ‘real’ players. Is that an advantage? Maybe.
I used to like Scrabble, but the one friend we played against used to make up rules. For instance he would add words to another word to make a sentence! He insisted this was OK and would argue and lose his temper when we disagreed. So those games stopped (he would also sneakily swap tiles if he didn’t have good letters).
The final game I used to play was Monopoly with my sisters, that was very competitive. We used to squabble a lot over who was winning. It got too argumentative at Christmas when we used to play, so I was glad when we stopped playing it. X
Random stamps seen at Spode studios while I was at a meeting today. We were deciding on when to hold the next open studio day (August) and these were on the table. Someone must be a philatelist there. Three cents seems very cheap today, but I wonder how much that would be in today’s money. And I have no idea what the exchange rate would be between New Zealand and the UK.
Propped on my easle next to my latest painting, a lovely card from my friend in the USA. I felt a wave of joy and guilt! Joy to be connected with such a lovely person. Guilt because all my intentions to send cards were knocked for six by this chest infection. I had to rely on sending emails and Facebook. I only sent cards to a few close relatives. I even have cards in my handbag I was going to deliver on Christmas eve but didn’t get out on the freezing cold.
Thank you to Martha for this card and letter. You really made me smile today. Thinking of you and Bear and Teddy. Hope you get some good snow!
Mallaband-Brown