Not enough thyme in the day

 It's been a busy weekend thus far. We have been finally feeling brave enough to drag the suns away from the meadow and into the Wild World.

 Last night I demanded that they all came with me to a lantern making workshop that culminated in a lantern-lit walk up Carnmoney Hill to hear a storyteller at the old well.

 Gratifyingly, on the way down the muddy, slippy, dark, dark, magical hill, Jo did say, "That was much better than I thought it would be, Mummy." Life with boys.

 Not quite sure what this shot was exactly, but it was generally me trying and failing to capture some of the soft glow of battery powered lights in the night! This is what the lanterns actually look like, scattered around the Meadowplace. I slept with mine beside me last night!

 Tonight it's pumpkin time. Pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie for lunch with some new folk from our new church tomorrow. I have discovered that I didn't bring my pot of thyme with me in the move.

 One of our sixth form study supervisors in school is running a pumpkin carving competition in his room this week. He kicked it off with a welcoming one, so we have stolen his idea for the front step. I think I'll have to give the suns free rein on the second one, but we'll try to maintain the autumnal pumpkin theme over the ghoulish invasion that's coming in fast now!

Non-views from around the place

 Jane, it's the same old view out there, but buffeted by wind and rain and cold! And yes, I did leave it too late to take this week's shots so here are the last few days around the house. This is my one pear from my Christmas pear tree.

 We took off through the farmer's fields behind us on Sunday afternoon- when Autumn was still kind and mellow and bright!

 Mattman was remembering the days when we would read "Going on a Bear Hunt", as we re-enacted the splishy sploshy river, the onomatopoeic mud and the high grass!

 We forget most times that we are a little bit high. High enough to look down on the Lough if you get a clear break in the suburbs.

 And home through the farmyard, where things are taking on a decidedly end of October appearance. I will work on rotating my picture of their seasonal butler who would otherwise hang horizontally across your view and be even more spooky than he already is.

 Here too the pumpkins are gathering. I have plans for these two at the weekend. Thanks to another Jane for the tea cosy. I only wish I had made it myself!

And here we are. Remains of the day: homework debris and Prince Charming's fantasy football entries (and there's something I never thought I'd say). You can't hear the rain, but I can....

This Day Last Weekend Part Two

Thames side all day. Globe, Tate Modern, the Tower poppies, and Greenwich. And yes indeed, country mouse is back in her Meadowplace now, washing school uniforms and checking homework. But that huge blue sky stretches from here all the way over there and all the way over you and your dreams too x

This day last weekend Part 1

 This country mouse was well in agreement with Wordsworth Country Mouse when she looked out of her window last Saturday morning. There may well have been other things more fair, but not from her vantage point high over Covent Garden!

Arts and Crafts floor in Liberty and The earthenware Pot by Edouard Vuillard in the National Gallery.

 There was a little bit of everything last week. Drury Lane flower seller by the name of Doolittle, Strand strolling with hat, a sacred hour in Liberty, guided tour topped by lunch in the National, and then Sarah's RAF wedding, complete with afternoon tea in the Charing Cross Hotel. Bells ringing out Oranges and Lemons as they emerged from St Clement Dane to brave the Guard of Honour's swords, and the rain!

Country mouse city mouse views

And the country mouse decided that even in the glow of momentous celebration and despite her great love of the soft respiration of energy as the leaves fall to the ground, even then was it time to pay a visit to the city mouse.

In some trepidation she prepared to depart from the safe and very quiet Meadowplace, where the food is ordinary and the routine is dull and the views are pretty but pretty much the same. She got ready to spend a weekend in the Very Big Smoke.

So tomorrow afternoon the country mouse will be driven away to the airport whence she will fly to London where she will drink tea to the bottom of the cup and go where she wants when she wants, as long as she gets to city mouse's wedding on time, and she will finally see Tate Modern and the Globe and she will maybe eat some Thai food and probably drink a cocktail, and there will be different views come Monday!

Bon weekend......

Views, books and decades of the week

 Definitely revelling in Autumn here.

 Definitely wondering if I need to revel in Autumn outside our garden.

 It's just that the novelty of having it all outside the door hasn't quite worn off!

 It's a very good time to be here.

 My baby will have been on the planet for his first decade come Wednesday, so we did lots of celebrating this weekend.

 And I even read two books this week. Admittedly they were both school books borrowed from Miss H's English room!

 I wonder did Morpurgo mean us to be wholly supportive of Tommo? Because I did find him ultimately unadmirable. There was a wonderful moment towards the end of his timekeeping when I wondered had he redeemed himself  by taking Charlie's place. But no.

I've only before this read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. I loved Of Mice and Men just as much. I was harrowed by As Mice and Men just as much. George I did find admirable. Heartbreakingly.

In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.

 John Steinbeck in his 1938 journal entry

Books

So this week I did finish a book, so I did. It was the third in Tony Macauley's series about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, so it is. He writes it entirely in the dialect that we all spoke in Belfast at time, so we did, and yousns might not understand a blind thing in it!

He went to up Coleraine University; I went to Queen's here in town. He does rightly record the snobbery to which this decision would have subjected him! He rightly records everything I remember from my university days: coming from not particularly pleasant areas of Belfast to the ivory towers of academia, the insider politics of third-level Christianity, the angst and the inspiration, the legwarmers and Duran Duran.

It was a good read and I found it incredibly poignant, though I don't know how universal that would be. Mind you, he does have a big following in the States, where I suppose interest in Island Ireland and all her corners is high. Interesting to be reading a book so steeped in the consequences of Loyalism and Republicanism in the week where not so Island Scotland decided that maybe the time wasn't just right.

I think All Growed Up isn't just as gripping as the first book, Paperboy, and the second, Breadboy, certainly wasn't. I think the two sequels bring nothing new apart from the on-going narrative. Paperboy had all the freshness of a book written in this voice, from this persepective. So if you hadn't read any Macauley, I think I'd still recommend Paperboy.

I have started rereading Divorcing Jack by Bateman- a whole other outrageous depiction of Belfast! I should really get around to reading anything other than this first novel of his. Three years ago some of us went to a reading Colin Bateman was doing and took our copies of Divorcing Jack along with us. We told him we were reading one of his books for Book Club. He was happily impressed until he asked which one. I think he was appalled that after his prolific output, including very successful TV dramatisations for which he wrote the scripts, we were stuck on the first one. At least with Tony Macauley I'm keeping pace!

PC thinks that Macauley's next book will be about his move into peace and reconciliation work, for which he was already quite well known before the novels. That can be my token nod in the direction of Peace Day!