A walk in the arboretum (another photostory)

I went for a walk.

Took my camera.

Beautiful living trees.

And beauty in the dead ones too...

Pine cones have fallen to the ground in the autumn, and now they lie still and dark, waiting to break down and rot away, to shed their seeds and feed them as they crumble into the black earth.

But spring is coming again.

Simple pleasures of this February

Sunshine on a winter day.

Getting shot by a tangerine and smelling of citrus for the rest of the day.

Owning Frankentop.

Discovering Tumblr (even if I am a bit foxed by it)

Renner-fetish!

Snowdrops!

Doing some drawing again.

Knowing I am partway through chapter nine of "Gold Hawk" and the revisions are flowing well.

Meeting new interesting people.

Crocuses!

Being able to walk home in daylight.

Remembering crying into my binoculars at “Onegin” last week.

Daffodils!

“The Golden Cat” – finally!

Eviscerating lychees with my tongue.

Getting busier again at work.

Trade Fairs!

Orchids!

I love my life.

Hectic week...

It's been a hectic few days as we prepare for the big shake-up and switch-around as people move to new desks/offices/buildings...  Work reshuffles are a lot of hassle. 

To add to it all, I've been trying to get a hospital appointment rescheduled, and have been unable to get through to the hospital by telephone or email.  Very frustrating.  In the end, rather than lose the appointment & get bumped and blacklisted as a DNA ("did not attend"), I have had to change all my other plans, cancel a long weekend off, and make arrangements to go in for my day surgery tomorrow.  Luckily my lovely bonkers ex-flat-mate Kez is free tomorrow and can collect me afterwards and take me home - according to the info they send with the appointment letter, the hospital won't carry out the procedure if I don't have someone to meet me afterwards.  The possibility that not everyone can produce someone who can just drop everything and schlep out to Fulham doesn't appear to come into their planning.  But it will be lovely to see K again as we haven't met up for several months; and we can go home to chew the fat and put the world to rights over tea and chocolate biscuits if I am compos mentis enough...

Bitter cold still, and on Saturday night and Sunday last weekend we had snow in London.  It's almost all melted now, but was very messily dramatic for a few days. The snowdrops at work and in my own garden have hung on boldly throughout, though.

Not looking forward to tomorrow.  I don't enjoy going under a general anaesthetic.  Obviously the alternative would be far worse - but I always feel really dopey afterwards. 

News

Yesterday I got offered a new job.  Our department is being restructured slightly and everything has been a bit hassled and chaotic for the last few months while this was sorted-out and negotiated.  There were some glitches at an HR level, which needless to say did not speed things up, and all in all it's been an unpleasantly stressful patch.  But I think everything is now ironed out, and I get a new role out of it.

From February the first I will be working in what's known as Travel Trade, i.e. running group bookings.  It's an area I've covered some aspects of, and I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into it properly.  The job carries a slightly better salary and slightly more responsibility, too, which is pleasing.

I just wish the process of getting to this hadn't been a tad protracted.  I am more tired than I would like, going into a new job.  It would be so much better to be full of energy and as keen as mustard...

Mind you, I'm always tired in January.  I think perhaps I have a mild form of SAD, for I always spend a couple of months every winter simply longing for spring.  As it is I would really love to have a week off in February or March, but I feel I can't really since I'll be learning the new role.  Maybe by April I can take a break; I'm owed seven days of annual leave and in fact there are relatively few gaps where I can use it up....

There are masses of snowdrops out at Kew at the moment, as well as a sprinkling of crocuses and wonderful Schiapparelli-pink Cyclamen coum.  Today was cold but bright, but it has clouded over this evening and is now grey and dank-looking.  well, it is still winter, after all.  But the cyclamen are beautiful...

Tea-stains and drama queens

Oof, it's been a hectic Friday.

I'm not quite sure why, but we've had a solid streamm of bizarre enquiries coming in to the office - the sort where one puts the 'phone down and says "God, poor woman!", and the sort where one puts the 'phone down and says "Good grief, what a weird question!", in about equal quantities. We're short-staffed, and it has all seemed a bit frantic at times.

To add to this, first thing this morning I had a message from my stepmum saying Baby Bro had been admitted to hospital with something gone wrong following his recent kidney op - it later turned out he was okay, but it gave us all a couple of hours worrying. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was panicking unecessarily after waking up in pain. It's not actually that unnatural a reaction, when you think about it, but apparently this is par for the course; it's going to happen for the next few weeks and he is just going to have to put up with it. Lucky lad; not only in pain but having the casualty doctor imply he's a drama queen as well... I bet he enjoyed that. NOT.

Have made an interesting discovery, after making a cup of tea in a hurry without washing my mug (yes, I know that's disgusting). The previous cup of tea had been ordinary black china tea - I never have milk (why spoil good tea?) - and I shoved a cranberry tea bag in on top and added the boiling water.

By the time I came to drink it, the tannin stains from the China tea, which normally require plenty of soap and scrubbing to shift, had almost completely vanished. One is always reading about the acidic properties of fruit-based herbal teas, and I think I may have just demonstrated it (& then drunk the evidence - ooh, lovely, tasty tannins, delicious...). Another Science Experiment You Can Eat, perhaps?

But at least the sun shone and the crocuses and snowdrops, and the very first daffodils, are looking beautiful... It's possibly my favourite time of year - from Imbolc to Beltane, the Wakening Quarter.

First tiny signs of spring!

Today as I was drawing my curtains onto the dark pre-dawn light, I heard, as well as the usual winter chorus of robins, a blackbird. No mistaking that melodious alto flute amid all the high whistles. Robins call and sing all winter but the other songbirds don't start until in the spring a young bird's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love (apologies to Tennyson's ghost)... So a blackbird singing in the morning gloom is a sweet sign of spring. At work today I have been admiring the early snowdrops, a glorious sight especially as it is a sunny day (if bitterly cold again) and then on my way out to get a sandwich at lunch I saw the first few brave little pale crocuses. The mild weather last week must have encouraged them (and this colder patch will probably stop them in their tracks again!). It is such a cheering sight, these first little quiverings of spring, as the cycle of the seasons turns steadily on.

Lunch break

I went out, intending just to buy a sandwich in the Orangery (Kew's main restaurant) and got seduced into taking a little walk. It's milder than a couple of days ago, though it drizzled on me pretty steadily; but there were birds singing in the bare trees, and odd wafts of scent from winter-flowering shrubs, and masses of snowdrops are now out. The first Crocus thomasinianus are appearing, too, like crowds of little mauve ghosts in the ragged grass. The air was cool and misty, a mistle thrush made drilling alarm calls at me from the lilac garden, and under the big cedar of Lebanon where I hid for a while from the rain the ground was warm rust-orange with fallen cone scales. It's a beautiful, damp, be-here-now spring day, when one can see the very earliest peepings-forth of the energy of growth, of life recreating itself endlessly, all around. Blessed be; and (since it's Mahashivratri today) om namyo Shivayai...

Snowdrops and lust

If winter comes, as the poet says, can spring be far behind?

This time of year, amid the cold and damp and the skies that look like dusk all day, I love to see those first tiny signs of the cycle of life moving on again; the green fingertips of crocuses poking through the leaf litter, the tight buds on trees and the first snowdrops with their graceful downturned heads. If a human being hangs their head, they look melancholy, yet the droop of a snowdrop is the most cheering sight in the world.

Thinking of cheering sights, I am only human, and on being asked by a friend "Who is this bloke at the Royal Ballet you're always burbling about?" I was inspired to search (after saying plaintively "Not always..."); and I found this.

Now do you understand?

I know nothing about Mr Avis except that he's a damned fine ballet dancer - and, now, that (like most men in that profession) he looks pretty good in nowt but his kecks. So thanks for jibbing me; I like that picture, and I only found it because of you!

Winter rains

Delicate rain, gracious as falling night;
I walk like the Fisher King, cradling
My maimed hand and crippled arm
Through these grey trailing scarves
Of winter storms. I dream
Of reaching out again to pull life in,
Of stretching above my head to greet the sun;
Of dancing again in the strong right-hand hold
And unforced grace of a Strathspey... I see
Snowdrops are coming out already.
The spring will come,
And this damned arm of mine
Will be released, and I will see the sun
And have possession of my frail limbs again.