Not Enough Spoons

Although I did find a few at the Antiques market

and sold all the maps...

 

Post Day

Every Sunday is Pick, Pack, and Prepare to Post

And the cat disapproves - she's in my post bag, very peacefully, until I arrive....

 

Eight Days of Admin

Sewing machine site not finished, but I have just uploaded almost entirely rebuilt Helen Howes Textiles site here

https://www.helenhowestextiles.co.uk/

Phew!

 

Burning Time

Lots of garden waste has accumulated and I have two incinerators (although, you will note, the left-hand one is almost burned through), so I spent a merry and rathe sweaty dusk hour stuffing dried vegetation into each in turn... Jolly satisfying

House glows delightfully as I walk back up the garden...

As does the sky

My Brexit Fail List is growing

No lettuce and very limited salads in the supermarket, and very little fresh fruit apart from grapes (I would have thought grapes were all imported, but as I don't eat them (too sugary) I find it hard to care)

Prescription drugs are in erratic supply - my Metformin has been several different brands each time; this latest collection had three different brands (and I know the pharmacist, who likes me, was as obliging as possible)

Garden centre has big holes - some plants in good supply, some almost impossible to find. My local nursery has been unable to source some seeds and there will be fewer vegetable plant varieties. I can't find the seed potatoes I want anywhere.

And the garden furniture is disappearing fast. Luckily I have my garden chairs and have been  sitting on them with my lunch for the last few days - sadly I think it will be too cold tomorrow.

Vitamins are almost impossible to get, and the shelves are almost empty.. When I see the ones I want I have to admit to buying extra...

Fresh flowers are limited in choice too. I like daffodils, but these had sold out on Monday and there was almost nothing else to buy . The potted bulbs had all gone too...

 

Little Helper

 

And her favourite resting place, half-way up the stairs

Out and About...

 ...but not very far, sigh...

Still looking downwards, though, here's the new Roadkill images

Blue Rope and Yellow Lines

Can you see what it is? (Post-snow)

Making a Spectacle

and Compost! (Surprisingly gory...)

Also, indoors, my OCP for February, a little late. Cat in relaxed mode...

And the whatisit? A sweatshirt, well-compressed

Absent Friend

tayatha om bekandze bekandze maha bekandze radza samudgate soha

Ricardo (Richard Martin Day)

Died Wednesday 3rd February 17:45
Where does one start to remember such a man.  Perhaps the Friday he turned up to stay for the Winter at the Chapel, bringing a huge wood-stove stolen from a derelict building, and saved us from freezing. We rebuilt the chimney, made a hearth, and lit it for the first time on the Sunday morning. 

Or watching under the manhole cover as he attacked the toilet, "can you see anything?" Then a stiff dead rat floated past and after that we had flush!

Or watching him attack the salad bar - "Start with a sticky layer" - no-one could pile food up with such skill and panache.

Or him arriving at a large lunch in a pub, late as usual, only to announce "I've just shit myself"

Or him driving me home from Alford craft market, with the stock and the van and a sick man and the children, after my marriage imploded; dropping us all off then vanishing into the night to hitchhike home...

Or waking in a cold van on a scrapyard somewhere near Boston, to find him cooking egg butties naked in his caravan and handing them out over the half-door - then arranging my "new" Morris Minor engine in the back of the van and watching us drive away...

Or, him cooking in the caravan at Strawberry Fair, dressed only in an apron and old shoes, when the EHO arrived - she didn't bat an eyelid.

At Revesby, another EHO "What is this sack of potatoes doing on the ground" "Madam, that's where they grow"

Auctioning the last egg butty at some little fair in Suffolk where he was the only caterer, at 2 am, to much applause...

Surprise pea fritters

Large and Small platefuls - "can we have a large and two forks?" "We don't give two forks"

Driving off the field at Tuttington with the 32ft Pemberton caravan that was home and work, and taking both the gateposts off on the way out...

Busking, sitting on a tiny amplifier, with a Spanish guitar; making rather unexpected complex instrumental music

Painting - sadly I don't have any of his work now, but the sheer energy and gaudiness was astounding. Mostly painted with oddments of household gloss on plywood...

Weathering the storm at the end of a fair, driving hurricanes, and a small distant cry as we finished packing the van - "brandy coffee...."

I knew him for almost 40 years, through him met one of my most interesting and lovely, and sadly now also late, friends, and there is much much more that might be added to the list above. 

I had not seen him for a while - the last time was at Abi and Paul's wedding

He had been much diminished, had a stroke, was a little aphasic and absent-minded, but still full of mischief and obviously having a good time

After that I only got odd phone calls. Usually he would ramble for a while, then demand that I make him "100 teddy bears" then silence for a long time. The last time he rang he spoke to John, and I was doing something complicated, so we didn't talk. 

He was not well for the last few years, lost both legs to bad self-care, and his life got rather small, but I think, on the whole, it was, although a rather poverty-stricken and sometimes difficult life, always the one he felt worked best for him.

I'm assuming he's already back, somewhere, and working on the next life. May it be better in lots of ways, and always fun...

 

Sunnier Days

Dundee, with penguins

Taken by my friend Brian, on a nice day out together a few years back.

Oh, how I want to travel....

 

Word For The Year

 ... is Unblock

I have been finding it hard to get motivated, and some days, to get out of bed, and I fail at the least little catch-point, then find I have abandoned a good deal of work for the sake of getting finished. So, although this is not such a great image as last year's Renaissance , I think it may well be more useful

Image - full moon just about to breach the clouds, taken with my phone...

Death of Literacy and Signs of The Times

 

Spotted on a (very expensive) hard-back accounts book in WH Smiths

So many empty shops

Vending machine

Oh, dearie me...

And much roadkill...