30 November: Birds

At lunchtime, while the kettle was boiling, I glanced out of the window, and saw a flock of sparrows milling about on the path. They were still there when I returned with the camera.

They were eating seed spilt from the hanging feeder you can just see the bottom of, by the post on the left.

A solitary starling was chased away from the seed on the ground. It went to wash in the bird-bath at the far end of the path, and was again surrounded by sparrows.

Then 3 collared doves arrived.

There have not been a lot of birds to be seen in the garden recently, apart from the regular breakfast time pair of dunnocks.

That's the trunk/stem of Mme Alfred Carriere in the lower picture, on the right.

29 November: Beta Blogger

Shut my eyes and took the leap - this wonderful bag of strings now comes to you in Beta Blogger.

As far as I can see (without my glasses of course) the only difference is that some of the comments seem to be written by anonymous. So if you want me to understand, you just might need to put your name in the comment.

26 November: Gloomy

Some of the neighbours have been out with their step-ladders, putting up the external Chr*****s decorations. One of them involves a row of little Chr*****s trees in planters - let's just hope it doesn't break into "Well here it is, Merry Chr...." every time someone walks past.

The weather's been dull, DH has had a nasty sickness and diarrhoea bug (why does Blogger think that's wrongly spelt?), I've been sleeping badly and my eczema's playing up, a meeting yesterday produced an unexpected depression, and I'm sick to death of people asking me how much longer I have to work.

But the sun's come out, I've spent all morning spinning, been out for a walk, and now things can only get better - apart from the guy putting up more bloody Chr*****s lights on the house smack opposite our front door. Pardon my swearing.

Isn't "pardon" one of those terribly non-U words, like "toilet" and "serviette"? I do like using non-U words, but somehow, I don't think *netty* falls into either category.

(You see, I may not have the local accent, but I can manage the vocabulary.)

Now I think I'll go and ply those singles I spun this morning. And maybe even look forward to going to work tomorrow.

23 November: Fred Knittle rocks!

Statcounter tells me there have been a lot of visitors looking for information about Fred Knittle.

I know little about him, or the Young @ Heart chorus - only what was in the TV programme and what is on their website, which you can find at www.youngatheartchorus.com.

Anyone know of any similar group in Britain?

Update on 2 December - there is now a piece about Fred on the Young @ Heart chorus website.

22 November: In the garden

Madame Alfred Carriere* needed a trim.

There were 6-8 foot lengths of growth sticking out all over the top, and the wind had broken one down; half an hour with the stepladder and secateurs had the old girl (though she is only 4 years old) looking much tidier.

Then I looked for some more contributions to my series of leaf litter photos. This is liquidambar leaves by the cyclamen -

And here are magnolia leaves by foxglove and sweet williams -

And the lily looked lovely, with still a bit of nasturtium surviving the frosts -


On the technology front, the "upgraded" broadband doesn't seem to have made any difference. And the Statcounter is pretty incomprehensible, especially as it refuses to ignore my own visits. Still, it revealed that the String Bag was Google's top choice for "fred knittle fix you".

I'm not sure I want this sort of publicity.

* She is, of course, a rose.

21 November: Upgraded

Our internet access has been rudely interrupted by our ISP.

On Saturday they upgraded us to super-fast broadband - which resulted in total inability to access any internet thingy* at all.

A call to Technical Support this morning (and why are we supposed to find it easier to speak to a lass with a very strong Indian accent if she calls herself Caroline?) was partly reassuring, in that it was nothing to do with them.

So we needed to contact the makers of the router. Huh? Oh well, I'm not very technologically minded, so that was the next step.

But I got home from work quite late, and feeling very stressed - it's this looming retirement thingy*, I think.

So I asked DH to ring the router people. He tried 4 or 5 times to get through, and could only stand about 10 minutes of the holding music each time, so it took a while to get through to them.

Then of course, it was simple - just open the browser you hardly ever use, type in a sequence of numbers (now why didn't we think of that!), and there we are, back online.

Much less stressed now - was it a good meal, or perhaps getting up to date with PeanutYorkie, z, kaz, murph, Bathmatwatch, etc, etc.

Good heavens, it wasn't stress, it was withdrawal symptoms!

*thingy is borrowed from greavsie - thank you.

16 November: Oak, and Ash, and Thorn

Needing fresh air after several days hunched over a computer, yesterday afternoon I went out for a local walk. As I've recently been reading "Woodlands" by Oliver Rackham, part of the New Naturalist Library, I was paying more attention than usual to the individual trees.

Along the lane, I noticed oak and ash and thorn, and thought of the Kipling poem "A Tree Song".

On the other side of the lane are a row of lime trees -


Then walking through the fields towards the farm, there's a large solitary ash tree in the hedge -


Along the track leading from the farm to the road is an old thorn hedge, which these days is trimmed with a tractor and one of those flail things, but you can see at the base where it was once cut and laid properly -


And in one place a large tree has been cut down. Even though the stump has been burnt, and is now full of casual rubbish from passers by, it is doing its best to grow with dozens of new shoots from the base. Closer inspection revealed that there are actually two sorts of shoots - the ash of the big stump itself, and some other shoots, on the left in the photo, which may be hornbeam.


"Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn."
etc.

14 November: Lucky day

Home from a "hard day at work" to find an official-looking, computer-produced missive in a window envelope.

The communication that is expected is concerning one of my forthcoming pensions, but it wasn't that.

ERNIE has chosen one of my Premium Bonds for a prize!!

Hold the begging letters, though - it was only £50.

Now, bearing in mind that we are teetotal vegetarians, what shall we spend it on?

12 November: Salute to Fred Knittle

Last night we caught a documentary on More4 about a New England singing group called Young @ Heart, a bunch of geriatrics who haven't given in to old age, and who have a lot of rock songs in their eclectic repertoire.

It was riveting. Far and away the best thing I've seen on TV for ages.

And at the end Fred, a big fat guy in his 80s, on oxygen, who couldn't stand up, sang absolutely wonderfully and beautifully 'Fix you', a Coldplay song, for two of the group who'd died that week.

DH has had to download the Coldplay album and the video.

The documentary is being shown again on Channel 4 on 22 November - WATCH IT.

Update on 2 December: There is now a piece about Fred on the Young @ Heart chorus website - www.youngatheartchorus.com

11 November: Busy, busy, busy

When I got up this morning, my hair looked just like a film star's - unfortunately, the film star was Stan Laurel.

Late to bed last night, tired from working hard for the last 3 days on a half-finished project - writing up the family history research. The first draft is completed (I think that's the proper writer-speak), but it'll need altering in several places.

The idea was to turn all the fact and dates into something a little more readable, and I think it has only partially succeeded. When all you know about someone is their date of birth, a few things from marriage certificates and census entries, it's difficult to imagine what they were like as people, or what life was like for them. You can end up inventing all sorts of nonsense.

Photos of people and places have been included, as well as some old, and up-to-date, maps of areas where they lived, but photos are few, often of poor quality, and sometimes of unidentifiable subjects.

There's masses more to find out, as well. I'd like to know more about the stage careers of my grandparents' generation - at least 7 were performers and one or two went on to be producers and theatre managers. And I'd love to find out if Great-uncle Tom ever published his book. It was provisionally titled "Ventriloquism in Theory and Practice: Its Acquirement and Adaptation", or, as we like to think of it, "Ventriloquism for Dummies".

9 November: After the frost

Now we've had a frost, the leaves have come tumbling off the trees. These have come off the gingko and the acer griseum. The low sun made strong shadows.

Under another little acer, a few pinks are still flowering.

And there are some interesting seedheads on some of the plants - this is elecampagne, which has rather dull flowers.

The sunshine makes me feel more energetic, after a tiring start to the week.
I went to Leeds on Monday for a course. Leeds station at 8.15 in the morning is just like one enormous rugby scrum! The train down was pretty quiet, as most people were still half asleep, but coming back just after 5, they all had the mobile phones out, and the chatter factor was a lot higher. There wasn't any opportunity to see much of Leeds, other than the walk from the station and back - the main impression is that there are an awful lot of huge and impressive buildings.

5 November: Transiency - and mittens.

The loss of yesterday's posting just demonstrates how transient this life is. Bit of philosophy there.

For those of you who missed it while it was visible, it detailed a trip to Newcastle, the usual struggle with finding suitable garments, the usual struggle with the fitting rooms, losing DH in Marks and Sparks, an exceedingly strong cup of coffee in Bainbridge's poncy new "brasserie", and coming home in triumph with new jeans, for a nice lie down.

Here's the recent project I've been working on. It's a small rug, about 3 feet square, made from a box of rug wool that I inherited from my mother when she died in 1983. We both used to make rugs from thrums, which were offcuts from the looms of carpet manufacturers, and which they sold in bags of mixed colours. Mum used to buy hers from a place in Hebden Bridge, and from the Axminster factory. This rug also uses some wool from the now defunct Durham carpet factory. The cat really likes it, but he looks strange on it, being striped himself.


And just to prove that I haven't been idling while I've been watching QI, CSI, and other abbreviations on television, here's the latest pair of mittens. Just in time for Bonfire Night, which I shall avoid like the plague, being terrified of explosives.

I apologise for the wool rich content of this posting.

4 November: Buying Clothes

Blogger just lost this posting.

And I thought it was me that had a memory problem.

1 November: Memory Lane

It started with garden plants.

Not being able to remember their names, that is. The Latin names never used to be any problem till a couple of years ago, when I realised that some of those names were sliding away from the edges of my memory. Put it down to the brain being full, and as something new came in the front, something dropped out the back.

But it's spread to people now. At work, I see someone come in - good suit, armful of papers, and instantly I can remember that I once bumped into him in an up-market shop, all the intimate details of an embarrassing ailment, I can remember his first name, but his surname? No.

Another arrival - slightly eccentric manner, I can remember the drinking habits, marital status, vehicle and pet, but his name? No.

Why can I remember all the details - who always wants a pen or a hankie, things they've told me like their new deep-fat fryer, their motorbike or their pet chinchilla, or they've never eaten quiche; but names? No.

It's getting difficult.

Thank goodness I'll have to cope with it for only another six weeks.

This has been a knitting-free posting. Thank you.