Friday 30 April 2010

Mirror, mirror



 Reflecting since 1765.
It saw me today in the V&A.


I was just passing through.

John Tenniel.
Alice Through the Looking Glass

Thursday 29 April 2010

Green shoes, white wall





Well worth the wait.

What do you mean 'they're just plimsolls' ?


I bought them specially because 
they are a perfect match for this
and

I don't do heels.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Desperate measures


I am not happy.


Blogger has ordained that I can only recycle


 photos already on my blog for the time being
and I was so looking forward to sharing with tout le monde 
pictures of my new green shoes (not these old things)


and the wall (this one) 


I painted white (yes, white) today.
 Only time will tell whether this was



or only fit for the bin.


Tuesday 27 April 2010

The wallflower



Wallflower, Wallflower, up on the wall,
Who sowed your seed there?


"No one at all:
Long, long ago it was blown by the breeze


To the crannies of the walls where I live as I please.


"Garden walls, castle walls, mossy and old,
These are my dwellings; from these I behold
The changes of years; yet, each spring that goes by,


Unchanged in my sweet-smelling velvet am I!"

From A Flower Fairy Alphabet
by Cicely Mary Barker

Monday 26 April 2010

The greens



Swiss chard,
wild garlic,
parsley,
sorrel,
risotto 
for Meatless Monday
found here.


Fun with tulips
found here.

Sunday 25 April 2010

Blue sky and brown earth


 over the last few days.


The Freemasons' Hall in London,
venue for the City of London Choir



and the London Mozart Players
performing Mozart's Requiem, Serenata Notturna,
 and this for you to listen to



instead of listening to me...















There may also have been cream teas


and remote country pubs.

Thursday 22 April 2010

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Scribblings





Read here for more on the
slow death of handwriting.
(And spelling very probably -
I see I have left an 's' out of dissolve!)

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Self help


The problem with reading a huge blog like Zen Habits
is that the very act militates against its central message 
which is about
disconnecting, minimising, focussing.

I have been lost for at least an hour 
in a maze of posts and links
which while offering me the key to a
saner, simpler, happier life
has simultaneously spawned
another monstrous time devourer.

So, after I'd plucked away the many suckered tentacles
 of seductive prose 
here's the basin I managed to clean


and here are the flowers I picked.


And just in case I'm tempted to go back there
here's a photo to remind me


just to get on with it.


Monday 19 April 2010

Solitude




The silence in the skies above us has had me thinking about
the value of solitude.
Even when alone, 
I am never disconnected.
I am constantly aware of 
the pressing and urgent business of other people's lives.
As planes sweep restlessly overhead
carrying their many hundreds of unnaturally seated human beings,
as emergency vehicles announce their presence
with variegated alarms,
as people shout and gesticulate 
on their mobiles on trains and in the street,
I am diverted from the simple matter of being me.
My thoughts are tempered, even if only slightly,
by the need to react to others
yet they are not even communicating with me.
Leo Babauta talks of the lost art of solitude 
and has much advice to offer.
Nobody who knows me would think that a blog called Zen Habits 
would have much success in detaining me,
I am a multi-tasking, easily distracted flibbertygibbet,
but
I do increasingly feel bombarded by information,
harried and rushed through each brief day
and anxious about 'getting it all done'.
Perhaps it is time to take stock.
Time for some blue sky thinking.



Sunday 18 April 2010

Would you like to ride



in my beautiful balloon?


Up, up and away.


Way up in the air.


The world's a nicer place.


Suspended under the twilight canopy.


For we can't fly.