Encore une fois

...I am slightly tipsy again.

My excuse this time is the leaving do of another colleague I'm fond of; Amazing Hair Woman. Who is off to spend nine months in Baku organising some kind of massive arts festival.  It's a simply brilliant opportunity for her, but she will be missed.

Am going to try and exercise a bit of self-cntrol, anyway, and not ramble about any of my colleagues.

It's been a busy couple of days; my weekend already feels a long time ago.  I had a very domestic Saturday (cleaning, cooking, sewing, grocery shopping, honestly I'm a bloody paragon of Victorian virtues).  On Sunday I had a further list of useful sensible jobs to do; but it was such a beautiful day that I thought "The hell with this" and instead I went out and walked into Richmond along the Thames path.  I picked blackberries and took photos, and strolled in the sunshine, and when I got into Richmond I got fish and chips, which I ate out of the paper, sitting on the Green.  Then I bought some more groceries in the health food shop, and came home to cook my blackberries.  So I still got a bit of the domesticry crammed in.  But mostly it was a day of slow, peaceful strolling along the river.

It was the kind of perfect autumn day when the sky is clear brilliant blue and the Thames is silver, and it's warm but not too hot, and the leaves are just starting to turn.  The thorn trees were scarlet with haws and the air was full of the sound of robins whistling. 

It was late enough in the season that the berrying was quite thin pickings.  I had to walk slowly, searching with a steady gaze; half switched-off, half-meditation.  I could feel my mind emptying of all my worries and concerns, settling into a state of empty calm, at one with the yellow leaves, the cobwebs and silky heads of old-man's-beard, and the singing birds.  I strolled and gazed, and picked a berry here and there.  By the time I got to Richmond I had almost a pound, but I don't think there'll be any more to be had this year. 

I didn't see any sloes; but I've made damson gin this year (always assuming it turns out okay) so maybe I can manage without sloe gin as well.

But anyway, Amazing Hair Woman has gone the way of the Redhead and La Francaise and The Lovely Paul, on to fresh fields and pastures new, and I am sticking around.  I have work again tomorrow, so I had better stop daydreaming about how nice it was being out in the sunshine and the fresh air on Sunday, and put myself to bed. 

A busy couple of weeks

By gum, I am full of pizza.

Thank the Gods, it's Friday.

It's been a hectic couple of weeks and I am worn out.  I should have been on annual leave right now, and in Greece, for a fortnight; but things have worked out differently in the end and I'm here instead.

I hardly know where to begin.  There are things where I'm not sure how much it's okay for me to say.  I was interviewed for my job, and I've been told verbally how I did, but not officially in writing.  Some of my colleagues are in the same boat and others haven't been told yet, some of them because they've only just been interviewed.  In theory the new structure for our department is formally anounced next week; so I think I should probably do well not to talk about it until then.

The whole business of getting thus far has been horribly drawn-out.  Different departments started their restructure programmes at different times, and some aren't as advanced as ours.  I cannot wait for it all to be over, and I'm sure I am not the only person who feels that way.  I understand the need to do this, I even agree with it; but it's no less exhausting and depressing for that.

Meanwhile, I've had a good week in other ways.  I got some things done at work that I wanted to get done, wrote most of another chapter at home, of something that had got bogged-down, and had a couple of drinks with some colleagues tonight followed by a very self-indulgent pizza supper. The weather has been bright and cheerful too, and the first autumn colour is staring to gild the streets and the gardens, and the Gardens too.  The autumn festival, the Intoxication Season, is excellent, too, with some really good displays and a terrific programme of talks at the weekends.  The autumn theatre season starts next week for me, too, with "Manon" at Covent Garden with the DipGeek.  I am tired-out, but on balance it's been a good week, at least on a personal level (the international situation doesn't bear thinking about, but this is not a socio-political blog).

I think the worst thing that has happened to me was this morning, when I went to a colleague's baby shower and unexpectedly the chap I've been trying not-to-have the crush on walked in.  I was so taken aback I could hardly look at him at first.  Then there came a moment when he was nearby, taking some grapes from a dish, and I wanted to say something sensible and friendly, something that would signal that I just want to be friends; but my eye fell on his hands, as he stood there peacefully picking grapes from the bunch, and my idiotic brain was completely paralysed by the sight.  All I could think was damn-you-have-such-attractive-hands...  Nothing intelligent occured to me at all; nothing that was adult and friendly and devoid of embarrassing overtones.  I am hopeless.

I do accept, rationally, that he isn't interested in me in the way I am in him.  But my irrational hind-brain is rushing about in bearskins howling, it would seem.  Damn it, calm down, you.

Apparently his office is being moved, though; he's going to be in the same building as me soon.  So I will have plenty of opportunity to teach myself to be calm and adult and a good colleague, and not a mad hairy crazy cavewoman.  I vow to do better.  After all, good grief, I don't even know if he's gay or straight or any one of the myriad nuances in between.  It simply won't do to be cavewoman Ims, acting out and jangling my beads and waving my fancy flint hand-axe.  He's a nice man, he deserves better than that; and so do I.  Friendship's the thing.  That fing wot grown-ups do.  You can do this, Ims.

First frost, more writing, & a diet idea

Yes, you did read that right.  A diet idea.  Stop press: Fat girl has diet idea. Well f*ck me for a blue strawberry.

I read recently that people who have a seriously restricted calorie intake for two days in each week tend to lose a respectable amount of weight and decrease their chances of developing type 2 diabetes by around a third.  The rest of the time, they can eat and drink as normal, and that is why this strikes me as the perfect diet for me to try.  I eat fairly healthily, apart from my sweet tooth and penchant for alcohol (oh, and I do like my cheese).  I just eat too much (& have said penchants). 

So I am giving this plan a try.  Announcing it like this is intended to make it stick - now my sense of public shame will fuel the desire to eat bugger-all but salad two days a week.  Watch this space.  See if I last a month...

Meanwhile; I had a good weekend at my mum's - shopping, lunching out and gardening.  I'm now behind on my cleaning, clothes-washing and grocery-shopping, and it took me until this morning to get the dirt out from under my fingernails (good garden dirt, this is!), but I can handle that. 

I've now blown up another bit of the Droit Institute and injured one of the Evil Bad Guy's cohorts.  My heroine is reeling about in shock and the hero is still busy digging himself and his companion out of the rubble.  The dénouement has been slow coming, but it is coming, and I'm beginning to get excited about revisions.  This is an odd state of affairs, I have to say.  Normally I hate revision with a passion.  But this has come out like turning on a tap, and as it has flowed I've found it developed and changed shape, and I've seen things more clearly; so that now, approaching the end, I've got a list of points I need to wiggle in earlier.  Have a scene where x happens; have a scene where A discusses B with C so that we know more about C; make sure D mentions y and z in his talk to the students...   But I won't let myself write any of this until I've finished the main narrative.  It just doesn't feel right; also I don't want to stymie the flow when I don't yet have a completed story.

I've been lucky with this one.  It had an odd genesis.  I'd had a vague idea in my mind for ages, but with no plot to speak of.  I'd had two names - Anna Maple, Thorn Reynolds - and no idea who they were or what they would do, except that they would feature in this vague-idea-no-plot story.  The I went to the cinema, and came out with them sitting in my mind saying "Hey, here we are, this is what happens to us! Write it now, please!" and I sat on the bus scribbling on a bit of scrap paper and grinning like an idiot.  All jokes about lust and chestnut purée aside, I actually owe Jeremy Renner a debt, since it was seeing "The Avengers", and specifically discovering him, that set me off.  Thorn acquired a face.  Bizarrely, Anna immediately acquired a face too (& her face was a completely new one to me, which is odd).  And there they were; not two names, but two people.

The moment I can really see a character they start to come real; once they get a face I'm able to get going.  It's as if I get them inside me (ahem) - I can feel their muscles imprinted on mine, if you know what I mean.  That does sound kinky; sorry.  But that's how it is, that's how my creativity works for me.  I know where they grew up, what they eat, what their handwriting is like...  As soon as he had a face I knew Thorn was allergic to chocolate, that he was a good swimmer, that he was left-handed...  I knew how Anna would hide her amulet, and where she worked and lived, and what had happened to her brother...

It was the first frost last night, too.  Walking into work my feet were crunching on crisp white-edged leaves.  The sky was a clear, hard blue like an enamel glaze; all the autumn trees glowed golden and red around the Green.  It was beautiful - and decidedly cold.  But now it has clouded over and outside the window it just looks grey and muted, and dismally about-to-rain-ish.  Oh well, we can't have it all.  I've just been reminded by a friend who lives in southern California that she never gets any Fall to speak of at all, and that is a sad thought.  No scarlet autumn leaves to kick through, no bright frost, no cold blue skies; no sudden gales, no soft silent November rains...  So I will remind myself again to cherish what I have and appreciate all its beauties, even the muted grey ones.

Autumn beauty, and is it better to have loved and lost...

... or never to have loved at all?

It’s a glorious day, perfect autumn weather with a clear blue sky and a nip in the breeze.  I just had to walk across the Gardens to deliver something to one of the gates for someone to collect tomorrow.  I’ve come back to the office with my cheeks tingling from the crisp air and my eyes wide with colour.  By damn, I am a lucky woman to work in such a beautiful place.  

The two big liriodendrons at the south end of the Broadwalk are covered in glowing yellow; they look as though someone dipped them in gold coins from top to toe.  The taxodiums beside the lake are on the turn, half soft green and half the colour of Edward Watson’s hair (Mr Watson has ravishing hair).  The long salvia border is still full of little sparks of colour, and in the Rock Garden cyclamen and autumn crocuses, buttercup yellow Sternbergia lutea and sky blue lithodora are still flowering everywhere.  Squirrels hurry by, busy about their squirrelly business, or sit and scold in irritable little chirrups from the branches overhead.  A nuthatch called to me, duweep duweep duweep, and a flock of long-tailed tits flew by twittering in their ringing high pitched voices.

Had a very odd ‘phone conversation yesterday evening while cooking supper.  It seemed funny at the time (& gave me some moments of very enjoyable fantasy!).  But I am now a bit troubled, as with the benefit of hindsight I am wondering why the question was being asked in the first place.

J: What would you do if you could have the man of your dreams, but for only one night?

Me: (thinks, mmm, the man of my dreams for just one night, plus a can of chestnut purée, mmm) Why, is it his last night on earth?

J: No, no, you can just only have one night together.

Me: (still thinking mmm, the man of my dreams has such amazing hands) I hate one-night-stands.

J: No, but seriously, what would you do?

Me: (thinks, mmm, chestnut purée on that lovely long thumb, oh, oh, oh... ah, better not mention this to J., she thinks I’m a Wise Older Woman, not a Dirty Old Woman) I’d cook him a good meal and pour him some decent wine and then make love to him all night; I’m only human!  Why do you ask?

J: Oh, no reason...  How about if you could be with him for just one weekend?

Me: (thinks, at least two cans of chestnut purée, then) Cook him several good meals, take him to Kew for a romantic walk in the autumn leaves, take him for a nice crazy afternoon helping TCI with her DIY, have an evening at the Magpie and Crown; and then make love to him all night.  Why do you ask – are you having a Major Dilemma Moment?

J: Oh no, (slightly stagey laugh) nothing like that...  How about if you could have him for just one holiday?

Me: Have you been reading “Possession”?

J: I don’t like horror stories.

Me: ??  Er... 

J: Would you have that one holiday with him, if you could never see him again afterwards?

Me: Yes, of course I would.  And I’d try to make it as happy and memorable as possible. 

J: Oh...

I don’t know if she’d had the answer she was hoping for, but I can’t get rid of a worrying feeling that I was meant to say something else.  She just didn’t sound too happy.  

Have I just encouraged a friend to do something that will break her heart in little pieces?  Should I have been puritanical and advocated a life of virtue and self-denial, touch-these-soft-lips-and-part, what-the-eye-don’t-see, the-heart-don’t-grieve-after?   Supposing she is having a Major Dilemma Moment? 

I am not a good person to ask for advice, methinks (apart from anything else, I am easily distracted by the thought of the amazingly gorgeous hands of the man of my dreams...).

Not having any idea of the context, I simply gave honest answers.  I’ve loved and lost, and had my heart broken, and I wouldn’t undo a moment of it – no, not the ecstasy, not the agony, not even the real disasters.  And so, if I could have the man of my dreams for just one night, just one weekend, or just one holiday, then yes, I would do everything in my power to enjoy it, and to make sure he enjoyed it too.  

And unless he turned out to be allergic to chestnuts, I’d start by opening a tin of the world’s best chestnut purée, Clement Faugier brand“Crème de marrons de L’Ardeche”...

How late it was, how late...

...except actually it isn't late at all.  It's just really vilely dark outside, because the clocks went back.  The sodding clocks went back.  It's autumn. 

It's also about to pour with rain, yet again.

On the plus side, it's Samhain on Wednesday.

Had another happy Saturday helping TCI and G with their DIY.  They're on to the decorating stage; paint rollers and dustsheets and toning sealants going in around fitted and finished white goods....  Large chunks of their flat now look glorious; like a real home!   Some bits do still need a little work, e.g. the half-plastered wall in the kitchen.  They should be very proud of themselves, though, as they have done a tremendous amount since they bought the place.  DIY heroes!

What else?  I'm still writing; Villain A (the Really Bad one) is now arguing with Villain B (the unpleasant but naif scientist) and threatening him with an automatic pistol.  Villain B is being sarcastic, which may not be a good idea given that he is not the one with the gun.  My heroine has made herself invisible and is trying not to feel trapped and out of her depth, seeing as she cannot get out of the room and there's a Nasty Piece of Work with a gun standing a few feet away from her, losing his temper rapidly...  Yep, it's all fun and games at (what's left of ) the Droit Institute.

I'm very worried by the weather reports from across the Atlantic.  Good grief, it sounds as if half the east coast of America is in danger; they are apparently facing a similar combination of factors as caused the famous floods of 1953 in Britain and Holland - with the addition of a bloody hurricane...  The most powerful country in the world; but Mother Nature can still be far mightier.  The US will be in my prayers tonight.

 

Friday friday...

Thank goodness it's Friday.  I have soldiered on all week with a steady series of flare-ups of cystitis; eating wholesomely, drinking water and cranberry juice and herbal teas, taking those funny-flavoured alkalizing  powders, taking cranberry caps and a probiotic and goldenseal drops (ugh, that's one nasty taste).  I now have a doctor's appointment for next Thursday (earliest they could fit me in) so if I'm still in trouble by then I'm going to swallow my principles and beg for some antibiotics.

Kew is looking wonderful.  I just wish I felt better able to go out and appreciate it.  The weather has turned wet (AGAIN!!) so all the fall colours are rich and saturated in the wet.  There are dainty lilac autumn crocuses everywhere, and tumbling clumps of the big double colchicum "Waterlily" to the side of the path where I walk through from the back of the office towards the Princess of Wales Conservatory.  There are still real waterlilies in the Waterlily House (and it's still hot in there, too!).  The Rock Garden has little secretive clumps of cyclamen, and crinkly pink nerines, blooming here and there among the boulders.  It's beautiful, it really is.  A feast of colour and texture and rich sweet musky smells.  And huge, huge puddles.

The wrong man is on my roof

Well, there’s a man on the roof of my office, and a mosquito inside it.  Why can’t it be the other way around?  Not that I necessarily want this particular man in my office, but any human would be preferable to a ruddy mozzie – which I have so far singularly failed to squish.  Grr. 

I know I am turning into a dirty old woman now I’ve seen the wrong side of forty, but honestly – why do maintenance men always look like one of the thuggy guys from “Eastenders”?  They never look like Will Houston, or Gary Avis, or Roderick Williams, or Jeremy Renner...    Or even like Mr Marinated Artichokes, or the Lovely Wes.   I’ve got a great view of this chap’s legs, but I have seen much better legs in my time.

I should explain that I’m suffering my usual atypical response to medication.  Most women lose their sex drive when they get a mirena coil, but mine trebled – it feels like I’m channeling Samantha Jones the entire time.  I’m sitting here eating black olive paste on home-baked mixed seed bread and thinking about what I could do with the black olive paste if I had the attractive man of my dreams (as opposed to the unattractive man of the roof) in here with me; it’s so weird.  I have never been a Samantha Jones-type girl.  Never.  I’ve been a good, quiet, modest lass (as is befitting in one so stout and plain).  But now – well, I have never stared at so many men’s bums in the street as the last few months.  It’s just really, really weird.

I haven’t started acting like Samantha Jones, I should add; just thinking like her.  I actually haven’t got a clue how to become a voracious man-eater.  Indeed, the idea is rather comical.  Whereas becoming a sneaky old letch seems to come naturally.  Oh well.  Thank goodness for the beautiful bodies and faces of actors and dancers and so on, then.  At least I have something to leer at.

Mind you, it’s also since the mirena settled down that I got this wild drive of creative juice and started writing again.  So maybe being juicy in one sense goes with being juicy in the other.  If so, I cannot complain, for anything that keeps my creativity up is welcome and blessed - even if it is also inconvenient and baffling!  But I can and do complain that the man on the roof isn’t a hunk.  Drat it, if I’ve got to be disturbed by all this crashing around overhead, I demand eye candy in compensation!    

One visual pleasure is presenting itself to me; not a man, but a tree.  There’s a big maple across the Green with leaves that are slowly turning the most glorious flaming orange-red, from the top down, as the autumn nights grow cooler.  The colour is practically incandescent in the sunlight.  It’s simply stunning.

Oy, what a miserable wet day!

The weekend was so lovely, with crisp mornings and bright autumnal sunshine.  Leaves are turning and asters and dahlias and Sedum spectabile are blooming.  Squirrels were out gathering nuts.  Nerines are in bud, and everywhere you go in Kew Gardens, you can spot little clumps of autumn-flowering cyclamen peeping through leaf litter or out from rock crevices. 

But today it has chucked down rain, completely ignoring the BBC and the met office, who insist it’s an overcast but dry day.  Hi there, Beeb/Met folks, you’re wrong.   It is a classic rainy Monday, and I’m feeling blue.    

I shouldn’t be blue.  I got my tax return done this weekend and I baked bread (albeit rather solid bread – haven’t made any for a while and seem to have lost my baker’s touch), and I wrote some more, and got my protagonists into the first stage of the final stretch.  They are now both inside the place that’s going to get blown up in a bit.  Anna has managed to rescue two friends, though she had to do something rather mean to one of them to get him to agree to leave.  Thorn has met something extremely unpleasant in a stairwell, and on escaping from that has walked smack into the villain and his cohorts.  And I’ve left them staring at one another in a mutual “Oh sh*t” moment, and come in to work.

On the down side, though, besides the rain, I have a really weird sensation in my throat – as if there were a lump in there.  No pain, and I can’t feel any actual lump; I just have this swollen feeling all the time.  It’s actually very uncomfortable.  If it doesn’t clear up I shall have to go to the doc.  Rats!  I hate having to go to the doc.

Odd, unsettled...

It's an odd patch.  I get bad news, I reel, I find my feet again, I realise that until I get more facts I can't make any decisions or plans, and I am left in limbo.  I won't get more facts until this Thursday at the earliest. 

At least it isn't my health, or that of anyone close to me.  

Meanwhile the weather veers between dramatic late autumnal sunshine and dramatic thick mists and raw chill.  The ground is thick with fallen leaves now, but even now there are still many more clinging on to the trees, for we still have not yet had a single frost, or a single gale. I am beginning to allow myself the hope that the weather for my winter break in Cornwall may be okay.  It's only ten days' time before I go now.

In the last week I have, besides work, been doing some more writing, had an afternoon birdwatching and sketching at the Wetland Centre, baked chocolate orange sultana muffins, had supper with a friend, been to "The Sleeping Beauty" (Marianela Nuñez, absolutely wonderful again as Aurora), sung (badly) in the first Christmas Choir practice and been on a Tree Identification training walk.  I've been busy, and happy.  But I hate this business of being in limbo.  It's like being in the dentist's waiting room, only worse by at least an order of magnitude.  Even if in the end the news is bad, I'd rather know, and at least be able to plan for it...

Beauty and busy-ness

I think the autumn this year is the most beautiful I can remember since I have been here at Kew.  The first fall colours began to appear in September, but here we are in early November and everywhere I look I can still see spectacular leaves and berries.  What is more, unless we have a high wind, it looks set to go on a bit longer yet, for some trees are still green and unaffected.  Because of the weather has been mild and still for weeks, trees have held their colour.  Because we haven’t yet had a hard frost, every species has turned slowly, at its own pace, rather than all going over at once.  It has been a long, slow passage over from late summer into fall, and it has been as quiet and measured as the rising of the tide.

As I walk through the Gardens here at work I am surrounded by riches.  Scarlet and crimson, brick red and Indian red, chestnut brown, golden brown, golden yellow, ochre, Naples yellow, gamboge; everywhere  I look are these magnificent colours.  Every leaf of Virginia creeper is marked with brilliant patterns, like Venetian millefiori glass; the berries of a crab apple swing over my head like gobstopper-sized jewels, and the Grass Garden is a tapestry of pale golden seed heads and soft, feathery brushstrokes of colour...

Actually I cannot imagine, brushstroke metaphors or no, how on earth one could paint this.  It is staggeringly beautiful, but so much of the beauty is dependent on the immeasurably fine gradations of shade and the tiny details of structure.  One couldn’t use swathes of colour without losing all that delicacy; every tree looks like a mosaic with each leaf an individual fleck of gold or ruby glass.  Yet if one painted every leaf, compulsively, one would lose the sweep and scale of the view, and the result would look obsessive rather than beautiful.

Near the back door of the office I work in are a cedar that has been gilding the pavement with pale golden pollen; a camellia covered with bright early flowers in shell pink; a golden-orange maple, and one that looks as if it has been dipped in grapefruit marmalade.  Moving through the Gardens I am blessed by colour.  Dodging back indoors again as the rain starts, I can carry, held quiet within me, the beauty and delicacy of the autumn trees, and their grace.  Not just the grace of physical beauty, but the spiritual grace of yielding to autumn and flowing with the cycle of the year.  Trees are a model of grace.

Of course from a phenological point of view the cycle of the year is a little askew; here is a link to an article by Kew’s Mr Arboretum himself, Tony Kirkham (who knows a heck of a lot more about trees than me!) on the subject:

http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/arboretum-team/a-very-strange-autumn.htm

It’s been a hectic weekend; all the usual jobs like grocery shopping, going to the bank, running the washing machine, gardening and so forth, plus a heart-rending performance of “Manon” at the Royal Ballet (Marianela Nuñez surpassing herself as a subtle, tragic, ravishingly beautiful Manon, Nehemiah Kish partnering her beautifully as a devoted Des Grieux [& on a more carnal note I see with satisfaction that he still seems to be resisting the fashion for chest-waxing!] and Thiago Soares a superb, powerful, charming Lescaut [I have never cried at Lescaut’s death before]); plus tea with my stepmum Jane, plus an absolutely spectacular firework display.

Now I’m back at work, and the whole office is being plagued with computer problems.  Strangely the internet isn’t behaving too badly; but our office email system is really not doing well.  Ah well, these things happen, in the modern office; but sometimes I long for the days of handwritten ledgers and paper correspondence.  So much less liable to technical faults!