When life gives you lemons

When life gives you lemons

Leave them to rot

Forget lemonade

I like it, not!

When life gives you lemons

You know its getting sour

Your feeling down

And your temper is dour.

When life gives you lemons

Have a good cry

Remember that all of us

Are born to die.

When life gives you lemons

Make something nice to eat

Pancakes with sugar and lemon

Really do taste sweet!

Low barometer

This was probably the biggest drop in pressure that I’ve seen on my barometer I have two electric ones that measure the pressure too and they were actually reading 962 and 958! What a drop! The gold coloured marker was what the reading was twenty four hours before. Something like 22 millibars? The result was a three inch dump of snow over the Midlands and south of England and Walesby. More snow is due tonight, but probably in the East and up in Scotland. Might be fun over New Year….

Rose

A rose, red as blood. Thorns or thornless, a joyful thing. Here is life and beauty, scent of musk, blooms that attract bees and insects. I remember the rose bush at home when I was a child. It had bright pink roses climbing up some trellis work. We used to collect the petals and try and make scented water out of them. It didn’t really work, but it was fun trying. The rose bush must have been eight or ten feet high and as wide. In the summer the scent was fantastic. I remember it was next to an old shed and the paint on the door was green and bubbling off because of the sunlight. The contrast between the fresh roses and the shed door was so interesting….

23 eggs!

It was an offer I wasn’t going to refuse. I’ll go shopping said hubby. So I said just take one bag then you can’t buy too much.

Do you need a list? No I’ll be OK. Well don’t buy a roast chicken, just get some thighs. We don’t need a lot, just a few things.

I knew there was a problem when he carried in two huge bags of shopping. I’ve not got much space in the fridge.

He bought:

An amaryllis (we already have FOUR)

A loaf of bread (we already have one and two half used loaves).

Two torches and some batteries (to go with at least five he already has).

A bunch of flowers

A box of frozen haddock

Three tubs of olives,

A bag of spinach

A roast chicken

Beefburgers

Gammon steaks,

A beef joint

And fifteen eggs (to go with the eight he already bought yesterday).

When I asked why he had bought the eggs he said you can never have enough eggs!

Memories of a painting

Old painting I did a long time ago. It was painted in the living room of our old house. The floor was collapsing into the cellar and was held up by a large steel bar with two scaffolding poles holding each end. The cellar was also wet, it used to drip condensation onto the floor. I remember the wiring was bad. The flex to the lights was twisted and cloth covered. If you touched it bits would drop off. If I wanted to change a light bulb I used to put insulation tape around the wire. The bathroom was an old coal shed that had been knocked through. Our neighbour complained about a bulge on our wall so the dangerous buildings inspector came out. The bulge was OK it had been built like that. But we had to move because he warned our landlord that the property was not safe. We bought the painting with us to the new house.

X

Seasons greetings

Seasons come and seasons go

Sometimes wind and gales blow

Winter comes the cold is sharp

Spring time and the singing lark.

Fills the world with sweet delight

But the spring soon takes its flight

Summer time comes round again

Sometimes hot, sometimes with rain.

Flowers bloom and butterflies flit

Through the world all brightly lit

Later days get old again

Leaves they fall in autumn rain

Waiting till the end of year

Darkness comes but no fear

Always after winter comes

spring arrived with glorious blooms.

Late presents…

I need to send some late presents. I didn’t receive my orders until a couple of days before Christmas so it was too late to catch the post to send the presents on. If things had been normal my sister would have come to collect them and taken them with her when she went to visit my other sister. But that wouldn’t work this time. I posted something to a friend well before Christmas and that took ten days to arrive. Goodness knows where it went in the meantime.

Giving presents means a lot to me, I like sharing things with people although I’m not bothered about receiving them. I usually try to fit the present to the person, but this year the things I’ve ordered are a bit more generic. Maybe next year I will be more creative. I hope things get better by then. We are living through a moment of history that cannot be helped but must be endured.

Behind.. Today’s prompt

Black and white and coloured versions. Looking in a little make up mirror at a big painting that I did years ago that is on the wall behind me. Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was ‘behind’. Quite difficult to draw a tiny reflection of a large painting on the wall behind me. A bit cartoon I’m afraid.

Dragon fly

The odd things people send to each other on WhatsApp. I was trying to draw a dragonfly and someone told me she had got one that she had found in her she’d last year. She sent me this picture. I think it’s been preserved in plastic? I was going to delete the photo, but I was quite fascinated by the wings and the reflections on it. Hence this random post…..

Remembering Barndances!

They were a hoot! Loads of people trying to dance square dances, making arches with their arms, swirling in circles round the room. Passing behind a line of people (casting) then dancing up the middle with your partner holding hands and twirling round and round. Crowded round tables around the sides of the room. Alcohol was for sale and they sometimes ran out of drink! I loved trying to capture people’s positions as they danced. In aid of Penkhull Mystery plays. I miss them.