Last and first

Yesterday I finished the first panel of a blanket that my mother requested. It was nice to finish something on the last day of the year. So I thought I'd start a new project today, and that maybe a new tradition could be here! The book is one of my Christmas presents, prayers written during Lockdown by the spiritual director of the Corrymeela Community. Beautiful, and challenging, just like Corrymeela!

So, because my great and greatly talented chum, Niqi, gave me socks for all the family, in four balls of sock yarn, I thought I'd better make a start! Glittery fairy lights sparkle wool from West Yorkshire Spinners - hopefully I'll have a pair of Christmas socks for this (hard to say?) 2022, even if my three wise men have a longer journey! And this is the only sock pattern I've ever been able, once and slowly, to complete!

Books-wise, here's the rest of the holiday reading, though the pile of new books is generously and deliciously high! I'm flicking through magical plans for a rabbit in a new school uniform. It's for a wee chum who will hopefully hear in the Spring that she has a place in the school of her heart's desire. And yesterday's finishing included this absolutely magical collection of tales from snowy forests. It came from our woodsman chum, and thank you very much indeed! If you are in need next year of new festive bookish joy, I could not recommend this little jewel more highly!

Wishing you great success in all your projects - and hoping that you'll finish them much more quickly than me...

Forward

 

Ang always has her word for the year, and I'm never really on top of life enough to choose one, but this word seems to have chosen me this week: it's been pushing its way through all my readings and all my thoughts this week. So, forward, dearest blog friends. Thank you for always being just right here when I need comfort or inspiration or wisdom. Please keep doing what you do!

And a very Happy New Year from our house to yours. May there be bright light over every path you walk this next year x

Well done, world

Not that I have any right in the wide wonderful world to congratulate it, but I do think we should at least pat ourselves on the back. We're still here, still surviving physically, emotionally, spiritually. That may be by the skin of our teeth, like here, but thus far, fine blogging friends, thus far.

I'm spending a day of self-isolation in my bedroom so I am going to spend the afternoon reading all your Christmas adventures and perspectives. Perspective is the first casuality in many of my crises. It's a good thing to have such a range of life lenses here in Blogland. 

My view on 2020 is that we did our best, we did what we were told, and we helped where we could. The difficulties that we encountered were not directly covid-related, but the circumstances did perhaps exacerbate the situation.  I found it even harder than usual to say truthfully that the joy of the Lord was my strength, but I did try to hold on. I love it when friends remind me that none of this is news to God and that He is still on the throne. Maybe my holding on isn't the important thing in this.

I do have two "resolutions" for 2021. The first one is slightly random: I am going to stop (mostly) using biros and switch to sharpened pencils. Ages ago I saw a school in France who had banned bics, which seemed potentially treasonable given that Bic is French. They used the old plastic casings to plant seeds, and just used pencils to write, putting the sharpenings in the compost. Zero waste!

And as I read to the end of the Psalms at the end of the year, I got to this: Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. Psalm 143:10. Not really a resolution, more a prayer. Maybe that's the lesson. It's always very basic here with me.

So, well done, Blogworld. May God's good Spirit lead you on level ground in 2021, and if it does get bumpy - God go with you still.

What I'm reading: a friend from church bought me this daily devotional which I am finding challenging but timely. It takes Bible prayers and arranges them as a guide for daily prayer times. It certainly helps with the perspective question. I finished Ali Smith's Winter last night, and think I got a bit closer to understanding the head of stone. Next up is the hilarious Richard Osman's first, and so far best, novel (his words) "The Thursday Murder Club". Let me know if you'd like to read it too, and I'll send you it when I'm done. 

What I'm making: I am now just over half way through Cushla's Comfort blanket! Hooray! So all other projects are on hold. Full steam ahead.

What I'm doing: Well, I hope you'll not be disappointed when I say that the sea swimming is also on hold. Our tight Lockdown means that group exercise is out of bounds for a while. We can meet outside (not in a private garden) in groups of up to 15, but not exercise, and I'm too chicken to break the guidelines. Ah, but Mags, you might say, you could swim with PC on coastguard patrol. I could. But I haven't! Bit too scared to get in the water by myself. 

I'm sure it might be the same near you, but a quiet walk out is pretty impossible round here with all the footpaths and parks completely bunged with folk. So I don't even want to walk along to the slipway.

I am about to submit my second assignment for my course as well, which feels miraculous after the last month.

And here's a doing and reading thing: MK posted about a reading challenge for the New Year. I'm far too aware of my limitations to commit to joining in properly, but there are some really interesting suggestions in there. So, I'm going to get my hands on a copy of Cymbeline. One of MK's genres is a Shakespeare play. This one is quoted in "Winter" so it's in my head, I've never read it before, and why not?

MK also talked about having one "reading day" a week where you have no screen activity, just reading. Today is not turning out to be that day, but maybe tomorrow...

I'll leave you with what turned out to be the only occurrence of Christmas baking in our house, except for the Christmas cake back in November. I made jammy stars for New Year's Eve. Prince Charming was most delighted. We had them with jelly and ice-cream for our dinner party dessert. Prince Charming had decreed that we get all dressed up for New Year. It was all as fancy as Bridgerton and significantly more wholesome. If you're thinking of watching Netflix's new Downton, don't. It's not Downton. It starts interestingly enough and it is certainly gorgeous to the eye. But the script is just a bit too cringe-worthy as episodes progress and once you've seen Episode 5 you can't unsee. We are feeling a bit bereft on the watching front now that we've got to the end of The Crown's fourth series. And it was a bleak enough thing to relive.

The dinner party was not quite as fancy as planned because I had made an absolute howler of a mistake with my grocery delivery. All the lovely New Year's Eve fare was put into tomorrow's order. Last week's driver left three loaves of bread on the doorstep. Not even any proverbial fish. So yes, the week where I am self-isolating has been spent making do with what we had in the fridge and freezer, in true Pandemic Style, and all has been well. As mad, old Julian said, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Except that sometimes they're not well at all, and in that case we'll just have to keep going anyway. 

None of this is new to God, and He is still on the throne x

 

2016: an Alphabet of Authors

You know, sitting here with a streaming cold that takes rapid, arbitrary dashes into 'flu, and able to do not much else other than read, certainly not walk in the Mourne Mountains, travel down to Dublin Zoo for the day and stay over at the Red Cow so we can go to the National Gallery the next morning, stroll round the new C S Lewis Sculpture Park with one of today's free guided tours, or even just mooch about my favourite go-to of the Ulster Museum bribing boys with cupcakes and the shop, if they would just brave the dinosaur bones and ensconce themselves in the bird hide...

Sitting here with an ocean of nose and a thumping head, I'm very glad that I got through 26 authors in alphabetical order- as I can't for the life of me think what else I did this year! So here are my twenty-six books of 2016. For my own records and reward. It's definitely good to have something to show for another twelve months on the round! (Forgive the gaps in memory- I'll plug them as they offer themselves back from the mire...)

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
Saul Bellow: Him With His Foot in His Mouth
Chris Cleave: The Other Hand
Vanessa Diffenbaugh: The Language of Flowers
Umberto Eco: The Prague Cemetery
Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Nina George: The Little Paris Bookshop
Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Eva Ibbotson: The Secret Countess (or A Countess Below Stairs?)
Henry James: What Maisie Knew
Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
M
David Nicholls: Us
Maggie O'Farrell: After You'd Gone
Barbara Pym: Quartet in Autumn
Matthew Quick: The Silver Linings Playbook
Marilynne Robinson: Home
Ali Smith: How To Be Both
Colm Toibin: Nora Webster
Rachel Urquhart: The Visionist
Voltaire: Candide
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
Xintan: Sky Burial
Yeats: New Poems, 1938
Markus Zusak: The Book Thief

Best: Bellow, Lee and Hemingway- For Whom The Bell Tolls is now my touchstone of the perfect novel, and that surprised me: Hemingway not being all about bulls and testosterone. An all American top three!

Worst: do not read The Prague Cemetery

Authors I'll read more of now: Bellow and Xintan, possibly starting with Xintan, though first I'm going to find out just what has happened in Tibet...

Happy New here we go again xx

 So we have squeezed the juice from 2014- and moved house and moved school and settled more in to a new church and a new job. It must be time for our traditional tarte au citron to go with some fizz.

 And the empty case of 2015 awaits! Another little kitchen metaphor to make you think I am at all proficient in that room. I hope all good ingredients will be whisking around in your kitchen this year, and that you'll manage to make something tasty even from the ones that at first may not seem appetising.

We have made our usual New Year gingerbread men, but I should point out that they are Janus figure men, and women, looking back into the old year and forward into the new.  Bloggy blessings to you all from all at the Meadowplace xx

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

This was last year's Christmas in last year's back garden. Not that there will be a back garden per year, you understand. Oh no. That's an end to cardboard box packing for me, thank you very much and you're welcome to it, Ang!

Last year I had told Prince Charming that all I wanted for Christmas was a partridge in a pear tree, but he didn't need to worry about the partridge because MK had sent me a very exquisite knitted chicken who would do the job rightly.

So I got a pear tree, now wrongly planted in the shade of another tree in this year's back garden and that will need rectified in 2015. Many things need rectified in 2015. For a long time I have laughed in the futile face of New Year's resolutions, but this year I think a major overhaul of some dusty life corners may be in order. I also got a partridge chicken- thank you, MK! This year PC bought me one of these. I am waiting for everyone to be out of the house before I have a go.

I thought I would have been blogging a little blog series for the Twelve Days of Christmas starting with my p in a p. But as with most things fraise this has not transpired! Two blog long-overdue promises are also on the Corrections list. I have a few days now to work on my Corrections- that's the plan. In between visits to the Museum, Zoo, Argory and sessions of revision for Mattman's post-holiday exams. Bah humbug to schools who have post-holiday exams!

Another reason why I didn't do my Twelve of C was realizing that the motivation was purely condescending. I have admittedly been annoyed in a John Humphries/Academie Francaise sort of a way at how people are using the twelve days leading up to Christmas as their Twelve. I had a lovely conversation with one of our Slovakian pupils at the end of term about Epiphany. He wanted to know why we didn't celebrate the sixth, and on we went from there. Lovely boy. When he stays out of fights.

All this to say really- hope you've had a lovely Christmas and are approaching the New Year with hope and confidence xx

January

I have tried four times to upload pictures, to utterly no avail. So now I'm trying with words alone. Just to say that the strawberries are still here, wherever here may be. I have managed to keep one out of my two resolutions, having breathed for the whole month of January. Pretty constantly, in fact.


I did sort of keep the second one, in that I have been taking pictures of the views from my windows every Thursday; it's just that I never got this far with them. And actually, last Thursday's views were very interesting indeed, as you shall discover, if I can work out how to post pictures by next week!


Here there has been some baking, more than that crochet and lots of reading. I did have photos of all the above, but I seem to have lost the knack of blogging. Maybe February will be better!

New Year Resolution

I did actually have one for this year. I was utterly determined to take proper weekly part in Jane's Thursday Views from Windows. Utterly! And since here it is really still Friday, because I haven't gone to bed yet, I'm going to allow myself a day's grace! So I sort of haven't completely broken it yet...

And I also have a word for the year- get me. Breathe. I am resolved to breathe in 2014.

There. So far so good!