Catching up: last Saturday!

The writing was in the oak tree, even the space rocket was the colour of Autumn.



Neptune could fight off September as much as he wanted, but had he heard of King Canute...

Happy and helpful

For bedtime stories tonight, of all nights, Mattman wanted his absolutely favourite book of babyhood.

So we read it, and I choked back six years. P3 for him tomorrow, needing all his own accoutrements now, with everything individually labelled.

But of course the big debut on the academic stage belongs to Jojo! Just as well the Green Room is ready in time for new performances...

What I want, what I pray earnestly, for these boys, and for the other boys and girls who are yours, is that they be happy and helpful in their schools. And that, as their teachers "get" our children, they'll be to their teachers more than just another pencil in the case.

Observations III

A link from Kilkenny to my first ever post- Dina Goldstein. We were reading the Saturday papers- on that Saturday, would you believe. Prince Charming announced that I had been right after all...

"After their 'happily ever afters' failed to materialise, the fairy-tale characters in Dina Goldstein's fantastical series, Fallen Princesses, find themselves facing the harsh realities of 21st-century living."

Last trips to the summer sea

Rip force plunges summer's end

In thrusts of sea and lists.

Already tumble leaves on paths

And morning breaths are crisp.

Wistful, wakeful waves of me

Must crash back on the Shore.

(Or more accurately: down to the school gates beside the Shore, bracing myself for the currents of two schoolboys' adventures instead of just one!)

Observations II

Where to start? The weekend was fabulous: relaxing, sunny, fun. Kilkenny was characteristically genteel, interesting, full of people and stories and spirit. The camping was easy and life thus simple; even C & W caught the bug. (Observing only that airbeds would be preferable to Thermarests for women of a certain age!)

Toibin and Murphy read from their books, took questions from the floor (of the newly opened and jewel-box beautiful Set Theatre), asked questions of each other, signed copies outside in the sun. They explored the link between the Irish prose and the Irish Music traditions. Toibin ventured that the musicality of Irish prose was what separated it from English prose. Apparently even John Banville started as a singer.

I sat with a fascinating woman who had come to live in Kilkenny from her native wee North via ten years in France. But I couldn't agree with her query to Murphy that the italicised dream scenes between his chapters were a distraction. I am finding them to be like the history sections in A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. Deeply rooted in the events of the story as it unfolds, and intrinsic to the whole tone of the book.

It was particularly obvious that women in the audience hugely outnumbered the men. Do men not read? Do they not read fiction? The authors still appear to be in a male majority? Are the readers not?

The street theatre was good. Futter's Child was visually striking and clever, but didn't quite carry through from that effect with physical comedy or even much wit? Edmund Tahl was, however, brilliant. How he manipulated his sound system in such complete accord with his manipulation of the surroundings and audience, I don't get. But Mattman did disappear without a backward glance into the crowd of children who pursued this Pied Piper all over the castle grounds and into the castle itself! Hilarious!

And Jerpoint Abbey was impressive but still humane and if you stopped in the cloisters you could hear the whisper of chants. The suns certainly looked hard enough for St Christopher and Knight Butler, and were more than generously rewarded by the nicest custodians we've passed through this summer!

Obviously, coffee shops were much visited. N. L. Dore's remains the only place for supper- cereal for two and Irish coffees for two... - and cuckoo clocks. Pennefeather's Over The Bookshop is best for the Booth Over The Balcony for people watching, according to Jojo. And you can't really go home without a quick stop in Nicholas Mosse, to drink out of cups that you leave on the table.

Four nights of no suncream, no need for shade, and less than 3000 miles on the clock. We are surely folk of Northern climes! Same again next summer, methinks!

Don't panic, Mummy, there are still shapes in the clouds

This was Jojo's spontaneous announcement as we drove along the Lough's shore this evening. I really don't think that he could have known how appropriate his encouragement was, but my goodness, am I chastened by his wisdom today!

Reasons to panic: I haven't begun to unpack the weekend in Kilkenny (for Crafting Catherine!); the summer is over now and I haven't done any spelling revision and not enough number revision with Mattman; the house is in such disarray that even the suns are asking constantly when the living room will be decorated and normality restored; I have left it too late to post my indignant question to principal who still hasn't confirmed whether or not I'm working two days instead of one and so I don't even know what pro rata percentage of Baker Days need to be done; Baker days are the same week as Sports Camp; our local Asthma Clinic is of no use to me, or rather to the boys, and I'm still fighting the NHS; and will there be enough grey wool left to finish its round of my blanket, which it transpires I've been crocheting wrongly all along?

Reasons not to panic: there are still shapes in the clouds, and Jojo can see them.

Amen

Observations

Toibin minus three days. C'est tres passionant. There will be no more strawberries until our return. A friend today emailed to ask where my wisdom was. I told him he'd have to wait until I'd had my annual shot of Irish culture. Even the suns have the good grace to be excited. They should be. Street theatre and a playground in the castle grounds. What more could they want? (Real sun would be good, but we'll settle for dry spells!) So observations might abound from all next week.

Dry spells will be needed for C and W who are coming too. They have been to Outdoor Store tonight to purshase specialist equipment. It feels an enormous responsibility to invite folk on their first camping trip. No doubt they will have many observations of their own.

But what of today's observations? According to Saint J, whom I had to contact today for panic advice on turning corners of my alarmingly expanding crocheted square, it takes thirty rounds to produce a pram blanket. So I must be one third of the way there. Observing along said way that so far:

1. Crochet is more mathematical than knitting in its cyclical threes but less so in that you don't have to count very many stitches at all.


2. Crochet is kinder to the inefficient than knitting because you know that stitch four warns of a wrong thing. The inefficient should be finishing a chain of three upward instead of attempting to begin a new chain of three through the next gap. And it doesn't matter at all if you drop a stitch or need to rip out. A*.


3. Crochet is nonetheless more monotonous than knitting especially when you really cannot fathom how it could be turned into a rectangle instead of a square.


4. Crochet must be fabulous for the creative soul who can't abide patterns, preferring instead to juxtapose fabulous combinations of thrilling colours in all sorts of fluid inventions.


5. Crochet will be yet another tool of my ultimate humiliation in wool, displaying neither thrilling combinations nor even consistent tension.

I will however take my blossoming blanket to the tent and it will keep my knees warm as I mull over the creativity, nay genius, of others. Maybe I'll find some wisdom too!