Owed to Spring

Oh, I know. There were so many other things that I should have done on a totally gratuitous day off school today. At least four of you must be guts for garters with me in mind. And I didn't even show you the most incredible giveaway that Simone gave away to me last week. I'll use her photo because mine would never do it justice. I have it in my schoolbag for random acts of celebration. Thank you, Simone. I'm still delighting in its beauty.

I'm going to suggest that my gay (can I till use that word in that sense?) abandon of the to-do list is owed entirely to Spring. This is where I was today, instead of being efficient. There were lambs and daffodils and many, many balls of wool. I bought two- balls of wool. Now I have three little shamrocks all ready for tomorrow, when I shall look at my to-do list. Promise...

Strawberries and cream for...

We've had our first sea of the summer and I am disappointed to report that I did not partake. I walked away down the beach and did lots of sea staring instead. So here I am sliding into the last of the day to announce strawberries and cream for:

Mags: Somebody choose a number between 1 and 9.

Prince Charming: 3

For MK! Do I have your address, MK? Maybe you could email it or something?  These are this year's first strawberries of Strawberry Land, picked this evening and ready for supper, but I'll be sending you a slightly less perishable version!

Strawberries and Cream Giveaway

Last year in Cornwall we were absolutely, disappointingly incapable of finding the Platonic ideal of a cream tea! On our one rainy day, after a fun but dripping visit to a National trust tin mine, we embedded ourselves in the coffee shop of a panning-for-gold-themed-place for the rest of the afternoon. There were strawberries and cream and Monster Munch too.

I think the holidays competition was also absolutely incapable of being answered, so let's have a nice, easy giveaway to celebrate summer and holidays and no more marking! Leave a comment at the bottom of this post, and we strawberries will pick out a winner on the first day of our school holidays- Saturday 29th June.  All you brave, well-travelled and clever souls who had a go at our recent destinations have already been entered- but comment anyway!

I have a little box all packed up and ready to go with some cream and some strawberry items. It is happy to travel anywhere in the world! And just in case you wondered, the competition answers were:

2008: visiting Mrs Tiggy-Winkle at The World of Beatrix Potter in England's Lake District. Magical spot!

2009: Prince Charming baking under the Pont du Gard after a quick canoe down the same river. Fantastic interactive children's space all about Roman life.

2010: back in France, but in the deliberately cooler climes of Brittany. This was the town of Vannes, where the heads of Vannes et sa femme can still be seen jutting from their house.

2011: clambering over rocks below the James Joyce Tower in Sandycove, just outside Dublin. I think I've raved about it quite enough this month!

2012: Last year we had our first holiday in Cornwall, and spent a day awestruck in the Eden Project.

So, bonnes vacances to us all- and do leave a little word x

Competition Time

 2008, visiting Mrs Tiggy-Winkle in her natural habitat. (Waiting for knee surgery!)

 2009, baking in the sun, guarding the bridge.

2010, the region will suffice, though the town and his wife might be known to some.

2011, you may well recognise this from recent strawberry events.

2012, working hard in the garden where it all began!

In a comment leave your guesses as to the five strawberry holiday destinations since our blogtime started! There will be strawberries and cream for whoever comes closest- with a strawberry draw in the event of a tie. The winner will be announced on Saturday 29th June, the first day of our school holidays, and you can enter right up until then.  Bonnes vacances!

Views from my windows and an invitation to a competition

What I love a lot about this time of year is having my bedroom window shrouded in foliage, allowing open curtains even when getting dressed!

This fabulous plant is beside the now-named pearl of rain catcher. Elizabeth- can you help me with this week's mystery flower?

 View from its window. Including scooter. Don't know where they've put the space-hopper...

Deliberately including the prosaic sight of recycling bins, so that you can gauge the rainfall- welcome to Irish Summer Time.

Now. Can you spot the difference? It's a significant one... Mum's end of the table is e.m.p.t.y. Free from marking!

And indeed the holidays began immediately afterwards, with Queen Niqi arriving magically with a Toblerone reward- many thanks!  The postman had already delivered my present to myself. So normal service is being resumed- three projects on display here. The fabulous cobweb scarf belongs to Niqi. The seaweed and beginnings of a Book Bag for Boys will be appearing shortly in a fraise near you!

Tomorrow, however, will be competition time. Do call by! In honour of holidays there will be strawberries and cream...

Brain befuddled thanks 788 - 798

I really am in a bit of a fuzzy groove this week. The marking is nearly finished- one and a half centres to go, and on track for a Thursday finale. But it's getting harder the closer to the end I get! I think I'm tired. Une nuit blanche will do that to the soul! (Word Reference's definition captures none of the magic of this phrase! Think of the two nights in House of Special Purpose instead!)

And on a completely irrelevant note, have you read House of Special Purpose? I liked it. I was recommending it to friends last week who are considering a cruise to St Petersburg. Oh the decadence of the retired!

Anyway. Befuddled. As a wise woman said to me today, it does feel like I've been marking half my life, and the strawberries are not entirely impressed. Normal service will be resumed soon, guys. And I've done an on-line grocery order, so tomorrow there will be food...

I spent one night at Brownie camp at the weekend. Heather Boss will have photos up on Hookery soon, if you'd care to take a peek. I suspect there may be evidence of me marking in my floppy hat. I fear there may be evidence of my marking in my floppy hat!

It is a wonderful thing that leaders are still prepared to take children away on trips. It is so very good for them. I am deeply grateful for all the fantastic, formative experiences I have had on residentials, and for the fact that my boys can still branch out and stay up all night and eat nonsense and fall in rivers. And have the time of their lives! That's what one of my boys did this weekend. The other one was hiking and canoeing and cycling with Dad. Dads are fantastic and formative also!

And so to bed. Three more days to go. And then there will be a competition!

Coming soon

This is not Jo's minibeast hotel homework for Friday. It is the picture at which we looked for a long time before emptying the recycle bin and pruning some bamboo! I'll show you his version tomorrow!  For the snail enthusiasts I would stress that all minibeasts will be restored to the wilds of the playground, with the snails, after the project...

Marking is nearly halfway- hooray. You'd think with such a lot still to do I wouldn't have wandered all around Belfast in the sun for most of this morning with Niqi, but hey ho, there you go! Thank you for the kind offer of summer accommodation, Frances, but it would appear that the weather has decided to give us another week of glorious, so don't clear out The Attic just yet.

I am thinking of having a competition to celebrate the end of the marking- what do you think? A strawberries and cream celebrating holidays sort of a thing? Yes, I think that would be fine. Like the weather. And the minibeast hotel.

Paths that cross

 Dear Deborah,

I went to the post office to post your book today,and the most interesting thing happened.  It was so interesting that I have decided that this must have been the reason why I didn't get around to posting you your book for a whole year, and why I'd only been given a few hours in school today, instead of a much more lucrative full timetable.

There was a lady in front of me in the queue. She was very busy with lots of parcels and children, and said that I should go in front of her. Now she was speaking English, but I was sure it was with a French accent. I thanked her and went to the desk, put your envelope on the scales, and told the post mistress that it was for Canada. "Are you Canadian?! asked the lady with the children. "No," I replied, "Are you?"  When she said that she was I was sure that she was French Canadian, but how do you suddenly launch into a probe in the middle of the post office queue?

So she went on- our post office is at the back of the general shop in the village. I sent your parcel on its merry way- maybe you'll get it in time for merry ways?- and then went round a corner to buy some butter. And who should I meet but the Canadian mum?  So, I took a deep breath and asked her if she was indeed French Canadian. Ten minutes later, most of which had been in French, I had discovered that her husband was on secondment to the Belfast factory of the the French Canadian company for which Prince Charming works, that her son is the same age as my younger son, and that she would love to exchange mobile numbers.

So thanks to your most belated winter book, we will all be getting together for coffee chez eux on Saturday afternoon.  You jut never know who you'll bump into in the Forest of Toon!  Here's little reminder of the book. I'm sure you have no memory of it at all!  I'll be watching your wonderful blog now for a review of a scary winter's tale!

Dormouse

Dear Dormouse,

Thank you for your lovely thank you!  Last Lent I promised to send a Rend CD to someone who answered a question or solved some conundrum or fulfilled a quest or scaled a mountain or something. I don't recall much, except that it was you and that I subsequently and characteristically did absolutely nothing about it!

This was one of the many, many reasons why I decided to stay in the Forest this month. There is a definite need for me to stay quietly in one place, where there is cake, and not emerge until all muddle has been resolved.  Do you read E. M. Forster? In all the works I have read there is always a muddle of some description.  Much emotional tangle and upset. I'm fond of E. M. Forster...

So I am most glad to have despatched the CD! It was the first on a long list of things that I really must send, and send soon.  I noticed today that Rend have some songs on this year's Soul Survivor Live CD.  Just in case that might be as interesting to you as it is to me on a possible Christmas shopping list!  Although I notice the free delivery is only within the UK, and you are beautifully en France!

I like your blogs very much. I can link to the delicious foodie one, but not to View from the Teapot which will not load for me at all tonight. This is not good!  I like the snapshots that you give of a happy life in a beautiful country. I think it must reflect a very happy, beautiful soul.  In fact, I think that you should really be Dear Dormouse all the time!

I'm also very glad that you are doing the Grow Your Blog thing in January.  I signed up too. Isn't it that a strange and disconcerting side to blogging?  I have carelessly lost followers over the last two weeks, and fully expect that by the end of this mad forest month there will be only the six of you left. And that would be very nice.  But nonetheless, that's not really how my alter-blogging-ego feels.  The one lurking in the shadows tempted by numbers!

Mind you, I lose things all the time. Usually car keys and phone. Marbles, mind, that sort of thing. I think you are very wise to live in a teapot. Not too much space to mislay things there!  Thank you again for your lovely words.  It is indeed a great pleasure to make new and real friends in such an ethereal environment as this.  Maybe we will indeed meet some day soon in the house on the hill. I'd like to hear more about that quite soon.

Until then, Dear Dormouse,

Bon appetit, x

Random acts of blogging

Blogging is a wonderful thing.  It forges ties across continents that would never otherwise have been so much as a mere concept.  Offering words that are lives that are inspirations and encouragements and lessons, that is already a good and wondrous gift. But when bloggistes are prepared to send tangible evidence that we are connected, that is a humbling experience.  (Not least because I am the worst person in the world at posting promised things.  You poor folk know who you are...) So, thank you, Floss, for my red package, which arrived last week and brought us great excitement! And thank you, Ang, for my teabag! The tag reads, "I'd like to come and see you and have a cup of tea, but as this is not possble, please have this one on me!"  Have some cheesecake, ladies; have a slice of love as a small token of great esteem!

We spent this evening playing Monopoly and eating chocolate cake, with left over strawberry puree from the cheesecake.  This is about as close to wealthy strawberry property deals as we will be getting!  Wishing you all a week filled with good dealings and a nice taste in your mouth!

Bon weekend, les bonnes mamans!

I'm a very happy maman ce soir! The weekend commenced tres bien indeed when Cooking Catherine took me in hand and to her favourite clothes shop to find a dress for The Very Stressful Boum to which le Prince Charmant et moi sommes invited demain soir.

Puis we went for un petit cafe dans un petit cafe which is also tres bien, and then I came home to visit les fraises briefly before heading out with the two other P6 mamans whom I love and adore for their grounded hilarity in the face of ridiculous school events about which you will be hearing tres beaucoup as the annee progresses.

Apres which I checked my email to find that Ang was congratulating me on having won Floss's giveaway. Quelle surprise! Merci beaucoup, Floss (et Ang), j'en suis tres contente!

ps No comments on the lack of accents, s'il vous plait. This is not a clavier francais and it is also assez tard!

Fun with Floss

Thank you, Floss, for hosting another Thought Fest in Lent! I have very much loved reading hearts and minds this year! Today I am very struck by Angela's enjoy and Floss' fun! As the drummer said at the Rend album launch we were at over Christmas, "For those of you who don't have faith, it's not all weird, you know!" Last Rend of Lent, you may well be glad to hear! I will be choosing a commenter from this post to send an album to this week- Happy Easter, esteemed bloggistes xx

Patrick Pilgrims (and this week's Pause)

We're gearing up for next Saturday's big celebrations! The Willows will be on their way to England soon- but there would be no point in leaving Ireland before St Patrick's now, would there? This afternoon we made our nearly annual pilgrimage to the St Patrick's Centre in Downpatrick*.

There will be a Rend CD for a comment that explains why pigs are in the middle of the exhibition! I've been thinking about pilgrims a lot this week, which is why it amazes me that Pom Pom has this post this weekend and also that Cooking Catherine came down tonight with this book for me to read! (I'll read it quickly, Fred!)

We built a beehive retreat for the Willows to give them a taste of Irish hermit life. Though we couldn't row them out into the Atlantic for the authentic salt waves.
They did walk up the steps of St Patrick's Breastplate, and Jo held them securely down in the wind whistling over Patrick's stone. (Don't want to lose anyone...)
Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cosy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. 1 Peter 2:11 The Message

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Quote attributed to Ghandi that may or may not go on to question the materialism of affluent Christian countries. PC told me about this quote after I finished Catch 22 yesterday, and was telling him how much I loved the fact that, despite the anti-God tirades from characters in the book, the chaplain is portrayed so positively throughout. Pilgrim on earth, come on, my soul. (*Fans of our vernacular should note pronunciation of "down"!)

Experiments in body clock

I know you're all faithfully and fruitfully attending Zumba and Pilates, or running marathan practice routes round the village every night before tea, but I've decided to address the tricky issue of not being able to go to bed early or get up on time the next morning. Obviously I need to change my body clock.

We read this article in the library one night last week, and it all seems very reasonable to me. I have been getting to bed early- between 11 and midnight this week, but have slept fitfully through the whole night. I always wake up slowly and sluggishly, and am never a happy girl! I realise that this is known by the technical term of sloth.

Last night we had progress. I went to bed straight after the boys. Admittedly PC was out at The Rugby, and we all know how long that takes. (Slightly less long than work "lunches".) I slept really well until 1.30am when I woke up very clearly and came downstairs for toast and a little study of Proverbs Woman- there is a reason for this other than madness. I went back to bed an hour later and slept really well until 7.30am when I got up wholly unmolested and decided to go out to rugby with the men. There was no reason for this other than madness, and indeed I relented on arrival and sat in the car listening to Radio 4.

The main disadvantage to this experiment so far seems to lie in the risk involved in using a serrated knife to slice Veda at 1.30am when your eyes haven't fully opened yet. I have also had to forego a cycling trip on the Shore this afternoon so that I could lie under a blanket on the sofa imbibing Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The main advantage has been the laugh out loud, at 1.30am, hilarity of reading Proverbs 31:15 straight after you've put porridge in the pot for breakfast the next/that very same morning. Minus the servant girls, you understand. This is the Year of Living Small.

There have been other breakthroughs this week. Pom Pom received her prize for guessing that Angela was here engaged on a craft activity- revealing invisible Egyptian ink, to be precise.

Then finally the dB Family have won the scary book- maybe they should save it for dark nights next winter, since Spring seems most certainly to have sprung. Mind you, given how long the stickers took to get to Denver, the book might not arrive in Canada until then, Deborah...

I am, by the way, loving Battle Hymn- funny, tongue-in-cheek, much more self-critical than the furore at the time gave Chua credit for, I think. But I tell you what, there will be way more push in this house from now on. Next week. When I get my body clock sorted out!

Grumpy giveaway

Even the Wombles are mocking us now. Tonight's chapter was The Snow Womble: It was a really beautiful morning, with the sun just up and the snow almost blindingly white except where it was in the shadows, where it turned to deep blue.

I had been saving this book for our snow.  I was ready for an un-white Christmas, and could happily console Jo. It always snows in January, I was thinking confidently. Ha!

So before winter is no longer with us, and given the profusion of hot cross buns and tulips in my local multi-huge national supermarket, I shall just have to offer you this now. I can no longer bear to look at the tantalising snowflake on the cover.

I must be clear. I am aforewarned by Angela's recent post. This book was given to me a whole snowy season ago, but it remains unread- it may be set in France but Mosse's deep caves are far too scary for me! So comment at your peril- one intrepid reader will be chosen next week. Bon courage- you might want to share some little anecdote of your snow with the poor snowless of the ironically frozen North!

Keeping Ang out of trouble

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge crossed.

Giant's Causeway admired.

Corrymeela experienced.

Crochet mastered.

But there will be a prize for the one who can most accurately guess what on earth she is doing here!!

And the winner is...

Betty the Wood Fairy! I ran all your lovely names through a most reliable thing and Betty was The Chosen Wood Fairy One. I shall be in touch to ascertain the leafy bower to which we should send our little box of little things.

I am very grateful for blogs today: reasons not to feel disappointed that I forgot to watch The Great British Bake-Off this week, and reasons to believe that boys will be boys!

Never mind, there is now only one sleep until Glastobirthday and I really must find out how to get photos back on here because we are all very excited!

Late as ever

If you had asked, I would have said with absolute conviction that I started blogging in August two years ago- wrong again! Happily Ever After, still one of my favourite posts, appeared in your superior midst on 30th July 2009!

Oh well! There'll have to be a little anniversary giveaway, obviously, though I haven't given that any thought at all- if you'd like a little random fraise feast do leave the customary comment below!

Much has changed since that evening on the stool: Jo is six and no longer four. The suns are now old enough to say wedding, instead of happily ever after day, although I ruefully miss that! Not only was that dishwasher replaced, but its replacement also went the way of most technology in this house, and so with our environmental hats on we just fervently wash the dishes now! Well, I just fervently wash the dishes now, with sunny drying assistance! It's all still worth every minute on the corner stool, and possibly more so.

The biggest number of comments came in response to Cooking Catherine's guest post on picnics in the Wind in the Willows week that we all did! And indeed the next biggest came after the invitation to that same week- that was way back in January when we were all mostly snuggling down into mole holes; maybe we should do an Autumn one? And indeed the wet weather here today starts to usher in the cool undertones of crisp leaves and comforting scarves!

Any old how- Happy Second Birthday, Fraise, and thanks to those of you who call in to see us in our sometimes tearful patch!

The Apple Cosy Collective Experiment II

If five or less of you would like an apple cosy:

Give £4.59 or equivalent to Christian Aid here and I will post you one!

If more than five of you want an apple cosy, those from six on can send me £4.59 (I have no idea how this would work from the States or France or New Zealand or Australia) and I will take out the postal charge and give the rest to Christian Aid.

If hundreds of cosyless apple eaters want one I shall open an etsy shop and make like a real crafter, with Paypal and everything, and Mise's magazine people will flock to my stall to source this new must-have commodity.

If no-one wants one I shall delete this post, slink away with the biscuit tin, and watch TV instead... (And put the ribbon on my paper bunting and finally sort out that giveaway before even thinking about doing another one!)

Day 17: I made it!

I made it to the end of today- this is cause for great celebration; please have even a little whoop of something on my behalf! After work we made gingerbread men. (The flying elephant is so Chagall, n'est-ce pas? Not to mention the dancing Matisse lady on the right!!)

Then we played Junior Scrabble, and I made it to the end of Divorcing Jack in between goes! Then I made it eventually to Book Club, Divorcing Jack ringing in my ears as I drove. Not quite hot off the press- in fact, when we met Colin Bateman last night I felt quite sheepish when he asked which book we were reading for tonight, and we said Divorcing Jack (published in 1994) and he said, "Oh. The first one."

It has been a veritable rollercoaster of a day in my land- I do hope your weekend is beginning with much more peace and tranquillity! And speaking of peace and tranquillity (Yeats reference alert) tomorrow I must arise and go then, and go into town to find a fabulous Father's Day present. No. I'm not making one! If I make up the paper bunting for my giveaway I shall be extremely satisfied- last chance to comment here!