Carrier bags

_20200717_223346

I was asked to give some carrier bags to the local food bank today. I’m very bad at remembering to take bags with me when I go shopping and I didn’t want to throw them away to go in landfill.

I handed them over to a friend outside the local supermarket. She had started a couple of years ago getting almost out of date, unsold food, and dry goods. But as austerity had increased and now the devastating effect of covid 19,she has found herself getting food for people seven days a week! She is a volunteer and decided she must do something as the local Councillor is not at all helpful.

I asked her how she copes, she’s been ill recently, she says she just has to. She cannot give up on people.

I wish I had her commitment. All I did was hand over a few carrier bags. I have to ask why people are in this situation. How have we got to this. The sixth wealthiest country in the world? But cruel to people in poverty. Who are seen as useless and not worth the money. Another Councillor has called people from my city ‘peasants’ this week. Remind me to tug my forelock!

When did I become captain sensible?

_20200618_233811

I’d like to be silly, daft, funny, have a laugh. But recently I’ve had to become, as my hubby calls me ‘ captain sensible’.

The thing is I’m his carer. I don’t like thinking about it but he has mental health issues and I have to keep a level head to keep him safe. But I don’t like it. I have to negotiate with him when he has manic ideas. I have to think through what he can do. I sometimes feel like a jailer. And yet I’m being sensible. I don’t think he should go and find a newt and put it in the pond, or buy another three bicycles to add to his collection of ten he already has. Or come home with another tree for our wooded garden. Some things are simple negotiation. Others are confusing. He buys ornaments we don’t need. He spends money in one particular shop on stuff that’s basically junk. But he’s happy. But they must see him coming… I worry about some of the things he declares he’s going to do. I won’t discuss them here. I can’t describe the anxiety he goes through every day, over things I would call trivial. I try and hold it all together and then live my life on top of that..

X

Round the corner

_20200716_195201

Today’s Urban sketchers challenge Stoke-on-Trent was ’round the corner’ so I drew the yard looking out of the back door.

The yard is full of hanging baskets and pots as you will have seen on a previous post. I guess I could have gone out and drawn the main road round the corner from my street. But this is a more pleasant view. Hard to draw all the leaves and flowers. You find yourself losing the detail as you draw more of them. I have to bring my mind back and fight against going into autopilot mode. Controlling where the pen moves instead of just scribbling.

X

Camouflage

_20200527_204849

Cat hiding, but not very well. His eyes give him away. Golden and gleaming. He’s getting well fed and sleeps in the shed. I’m trying to get our own cats inoculated so they can go out in the garden and meet him. I hope they will all get on. Then he will have to go to the vets and be inoculated too. The plan is by winter this abandoned cat will be part of the family. We can’t get anyone else to take him in and he deserves a home. In the meantime he’s having a good life.

X

Zoom 🎶 singing

sketch-1551121247350_optimized

Last night we had fun trying to sing together as a group on Zoom. It was a laugh, we all tried to sing together but the delays on the line meant that most of the time we were badly out of sync with each other….

Then my cat jumped up and kept getting in the way. She was walking backwards and firwards in front on my camera, so I grabbed her for a couple of minutes, I must have looked like a Bond villan! My friend who was hosting the meeting, tried to play music for us to sing to, but we couldn’t here it. At one stage he had three screens and two mice and keyboards on the go trying to get it to work. I admired the effort as it was the first time he had tried to do it!

Next week we will have another go, but it might be best to mute everyone and just sing along with someone leading the choir. As it was we were too busy falling about laughing instead of trying to sing the tune. I’ve never heard Molly Malone sung like that except as a raucous chorus in a pub on a boozy night out. It was a fun night though with friends.

X

Water

sketch-1594733693584

I’ve just been reading a Facebook post discussing whether spring water is better than tap water, on the premise that tap water had more minerals in it.

I know that in Britain the water quality is regulated and that government checks that quality regularly.

Water from springs perculates through rocks with minerals in them. Over thousands or millions of years they pick up the minerals as they are dissolved by the water (rainwater will also contain dust particles from the air, and organic matter from the ground before it gets into the rocks). Then it depends on the geology. That’s why we have hard water and soft water. In some springs the water can be hot. Some were used by the Victorians  as purgatives as they contained high levels of things like sulphur. They were used as cures and remedies, the idea being that they cleansed the body.

Modern tap water contains a few additives like fluorine. But in measured amounts. My dad used to call it ‘corporation pop’. Not dangerous.

Two frogs

IMG_20200714_000658

Hubby often goes down to the pond at night to look at the fish and feed them. The pond is deep so you can’t see them easily in the daylight. He has got a few minnows and goldfish in there. But over the last couple of nights he’s disturbed a frog that plopped into the centre of the pond. Tonight when he went out two matching frogs were looking back at him from either side of the pool.

So I asked him which one he’d kissed?

Lol.

Canal view

 

FB_IMG_1594591200568

Photo taken by my friend who went for a walk with my hubby yesterday. The Trent and Mersey canal. Near Middleport pottery heading south west along the canal. He saw a group of swans swimming along the canal. There are apparently Carp, Roach and Pike in that section of the canal.

He actually walked thirteen miles! A half marathon. He’s feeling it today. I’m impressed and amazed. I’m afraid a mile is enough for me. I think I need to do more exercise and seeing the photos I’m jealous of the walk he did.

X

At the boating lake

IMG-20200711-WA0001

My hubby went out with his remote control boat today. He took it to the boating lake in the park. This park is beautifully tended with floral borders and a restored boat house.

I wish I’d gone, but I was busy sorting things out as we are having to get a new washing machine. The old one has finally given up. The thing works but it keeps coming up with error messages. E8, E9. Don’t know what they mean but it’s stopping it finishing the programmes. I can only get it to work on one, 30 minutes 30 degrees…

But what’s this got to do with parks? Only that I didn’t go on a walk. They did about ten miles. I wish I was fit enough to do it. Humph!

X

What I see in maps (and other things)

sketch-1594487524505

I took another look at this post about map reading and suddenly saw a cat. I’ve written about finding things in wallpaper, or ink blots or all sorts of different things including the front and back of cars. Grilles on cars can look like grinning mouths, headlights like eyes. I love seeing animals and faces and objects in clouds. Sometimes it drives me mad when I see something over and over again. Once seen, never forgotten. Life is strange, the mind is stranger.

X