Too busy

‘Too busy, too busy, too busy.’ A line from a song by Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly; I have been too busy. I ought not to complain for this is life in the 21st Century but anyone who works in education, social work or other branches of the public services will know what I mean when I say ‘perfection and accountability.’ Anything less and you’re not worth the tax payers’ shilling, especially when the accountability squad come knocking at the door imposing their mantra of prove it, prove it and improve it. Finding myself with an official day off I feel stunned, reeling from the sheer paper based weight and incredible effort of it all.

Reading not writing

A Wedding blessing, a funeral (both concerning good and lovely people) and work, work, work. No writing.



Maybe it was having to read the bloody 'Killing Floor' for the book group with its with short. Fragmented. Sentence. Structures and its macho story line that rendered me incapable of writing or even of breathing. Not quite my cup of tea, you might say. Apart from the bit when our macho hero reads the newspaper when incarcerated. What else would you do? I'd even read 'The Killing Floor' again if I every found myself in the nick with nothing else on offer. (When I was a child I used to read the bleach bottles when sitting on the toilet.) Oh and the Afro-American barber shop guys, they were quite good. On the plus side - there always has to be a plus side, especially since my employer had spent plenty of pounds sending me on a corporate positive thinking course - reading the book sent me back to the song that inspired the title: major sweaty, funky blues.

After wading through 300 odd pages of that stuff, I grasped Amanda Craig's 'Hearts and Minds' to my bosom, and fitted it neatly into my routine, so much did it reminded me of how good good fiction can be.

A victory for trees, little birds, moths and people and a bit about Brian Eno

The council took on board the fact that people actually care about old trees. Of course, the council did not refer at all to the impact the facebook campaign and Bolton News letters' page correspondence had on their decision Still, it was an excellent result and a beautiful avenue of old limes has been saved.

The facebook page not only allowed people to air their views but to present historical and environmental information about the trees and the area. I'd never heard of the lime moth for example - though I knew trees provided important habitats for insects, or that some of the trees could be at least a 130 years old, or realised the trees had been planted as a magisterial avenue through which the dead could make their final journey to the cemetery at the end of the road.


There was an excellent documentary on BBC4 last week about the musician, philosopher and music producer Brain Eno. Ever a fan, since my teenage obsession with Roxy Music, what really struck me about the man was his amazing ability to appreciate different ways of thinking and being. I don't think there are many people who could share a stage with Richard Dawkins and happily explain how his approach to music reflected evolutionary processes and yet spend years gathering thousands of gospel tracks, describing it as his favourite kind of music because of how it so perfectly embodied the human desire to transcend. I got the impression from watching him that he calmly embodies a range of seemingly contradictory impulses in a way that's impossible for lots of linear thinkers. An enlightened man? Maybe. Whatever. I do think his grasp of ideas, willingness to experiment with so many varied forms and his contribution to music make him a genius.

Save the Trees

My local council is thinking of chopping down these trees in a residential area of the town for no other reason than a) they have scratched some cars and b) blocked some people's Sky TV reception. Can't they just pollard and/or trim the trees? It makes me wonder where the council's heads are at. For the first time in my life, I wrote a letter to the local paper. Unfortunately the paper boy didn't come last night due to the snow and so I haven't seen me in print yet! Seriously though, just look at how lovely the trees look. But it's not just about looks: these trees provide environments and habitats for local birds and insects. If they chop them down so people can watch wild life programmes on Sky, the world really is turning upside down.

Visual

Perhaps because I'm still off work due to 'the big chill', I've been looking at lots of blogs and realise how sadly lacking in photographic imagery this one is. So I've added some. Here's a photo of the crypt in the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Boulogne taken in November. It's strange down there. Not only is it very cold but it's full of broken things. According to Wikipedia, the crypt dates back for centuries and the Romanesque columns date back to C11th. The spaces are painted in pastel washes of orange, blue and green and parts of it are shored up with concrete. In places the ceilings are decorated with stars. To get in you have to pay an old gentlemen, who holds up two fingers and then charges three euros. Maybe he thinks the exchange rate is improving?

Midsummer dreams on a cold and snowy day

So much snow...Ho, ho, ho! Around 20 centimeters. The buses were off and they have officially closed the college, so I've stayed home all day cutting into A Midsummer Night's Dream and realising, not for the first time, that Shakespeare's comic plotting is so divine he could have scripted for Frasier.

What fun to inhabit an Elizabethan fantasy hybrid of Athens and Fairy Land (or should that be Faery Land?) and immerse myself in ill-met lovers, encounter home-spun hempen mechanicals and dance before dawn with Peasblossom, while simultaneously inhabiting a veritable winter wonderland.

The back garden is full of birds: greenfinches, lots of goldfinches - Baz counted twenty, blackbirds, tits, a dunnock, starlings and sparrows. All the usual but it's particularly pleasing to see them feeding on a such a very cold winter's day. The feeders have been constantly busy. I mixed up left over turkey fat with wholemeal bread crumbs and he put it out with the special seed for the ground feeding birds.

End of the old...

It's symbolic I guess: a way of marking out the changes of the season and the journey from birth to death. A series of markers through which we can measure history and change.

It's been a funny old year. My son left home, my book club pal died and I teeter on the edge the menopause with bouts of melancholy and an occasional case of the screaming hab dabs. Coming to terms with ageing is no Christmas party. There are some compensations but boo-bloody-hoo!

Later, I will gather with the clan and dance and talk into the wee small hours, putting my melancholy to one side and enter the spirit of the celebrations.

One of the things that's been best about this Christmas, apart from the snow, has been lighting the big fat church candle I've had for ages. I used it in a display and it only burned for a little while. I finally got round to lighting it again this year and with the 'big light' off and the light from the lamps and the Christmas tree; watching the flickering flame has been lovely. My husband has been pretty good too!

Lights in the darkness.