I love oxford

My first solo encounter with Oxford was not propitious. It was 1968 and I arrived by train for an interview at what was then Oxford College of Technology (now Oxford Brookes University). I got off the train and didn’t know which way to walk to get into the town. I spent quite a long time walking in the wrong direction before I discovered my mistake. By the time I discovered the city centre and realised that I still had to negotiate a bus ride to Headington I was distraught and rang my mother in floods of tears.

Strange then that I overcame my initial first impressions and went on the live in, or within easy reach of, Oxford for the next 35 years.

Because I came to live in Oxford as a student, I got to know it bit by bit. Its austere classical beauty seeped into my heart without the need for tourist sight-seeing. I finished growing up there; I kicked leaves in Christ Church Meadows; I studied; I swam in the river on May morning; I made lifelong friends; I learned how to punt in a straight(ish) line; I fell in love; I went to May Balls; I worked, I married and I raised a family within twelve miles of Carfax Tower.

So as we stepped down from the train in Oxford station this morning it was with a happy sense of anticipation of revisiting this beautiful city that I know so well. I knew it was going to be a day of treats.

The first was a visit to the Ashmolean Museum where Steve had pre-arranged a visit to the Western Art Print Room. He knew that the museum hold a collection of Turner watercolours. What you can see in the galleries of public art collections is only a fraction of what they have and most are willing to make other parts of the collections available to the public if you know what you want to see. Steve particularly wanted to see watercolours of Venice and an early drawing that Turner had made of the Ashmolean covered in scaffolding during an eighteenth century refurbishment. It was one of those marvellous white-glove experiences. We were presented with a large box of mounted watercolours and a small desk easel and left to revel in the experience of seeing the master’s work up close and personal. It was wonderful.

We had time after that for a wander around the galleries. We went in different directions; Steve to look at paintings and me to have a lovely mooch around ceramics.

Then we met a dear friend for a leisurely lunch at the Red Lion and talked and talked until all too soon it was time to get back on the train for home.

It was a grey and drizzly November day, but it was still beautiful. A lovely, lovely day.

photo credit: Steve Broadway

white hope

A little bit of hope on a grey day!

For at least seven years we have had a window box of white pelargoniums sitting on the outside sill of the window in our basement light-well . It’s very sheltered down there and although it doesn’t get a great deal of bright light the plants have thrived on benign neglect, getting taller and taller and flowering almost all year round. I really love them; they’re not as intense and showy as the red or pink ones I generally put on the front windowsill (and have to renew every spring), but I love their quiet persistence and delicate old-fashioned blooms.

This year I have begun to fear that they are on the way out. They had become impossibly “leggy” in the continuing search for light and were falling and breaking. I decided it was time to have a go at taking cuttings. (Foolproof according to the BBC gardening website). These are the results.
Not only have they taken and rooted, but they are bursting into flower as well. I’m sure a gardening purist would say that I should have nipped off the flower buds to give the roots more chance to develop, but I just couldn’t bear to. This year’s gardening has been deeply disappointing after my enthusiastic start blogged back in April, so I’m just taking a little bit of encouragement where I find it.

cuddly blankets

Finishing off other people's work seems to be a bit of a theme in my life at the moment. I have just handed over these two completed baby blankets.
St Mary Redcliffe Church have an active group of people knitting squares for blankets which are then sent to Ukraine. They were short of someone to sew them together, so I volunteered.


I have completed three so far (didn't photograph the first one) and have just picked up several more bags of knitted squares which I calculate should make another three. I have to confess that it's more time consuming than I imagined as there are lots of yarn tails to be sewn in before assembly can begin. Putting the blankets together can be fun, though. I played with colour-blocking on this one

and went for a more traditional patwork-style with this one.

I'm using crochet to seam them together and adding a crochet border.

what would mary say?

I seem to have been haunted recently by the voice of Mary Portas passing opinions or giving me advice on the way I dress! I quite like Mary Portas – she’s all the things I’m not; opinionated, straight talking, passionate about what she does and very stylish. So I watched Mary Queen of Frocks on 4-oD with great interest. Her mission to rescue women in their middle years from the joint perils of frumpiness or looking like a teenager is quite laudable and I’m sure the Mary range in House of Fraser will be a big success.
Despite being a “high street” brand though, it is still too expensive for many of us. I love new clothes and I love fashion, but I grew up in an era when you mostly had two or three of any garment – one on, one in the wash and one just in case. I’ve moved on from that point, obviously, but I still expect my clothes to work hard. I try not to buy things that I won’t be able to wear with several other things in my wardrobe and, generally speaking, I continue to wear things for quite a long time. I realised today that one of the long sleeved V neck tops that comes out as the weather gets colder as a layering piece (see, I know the jargon!) is 19 years old, but that is a venerable exception. Five or six years is not unusual, though, so of course it is impossible to be at the cutting edge of fashion (as if!).
I don’t need “office” clothes any more and my day to day dressing is more often than not jeans, a loose top and a cardi. Yet I don’t want to give up all aspiration to dressing with a bit of style; there’s no doubt that knowing that I’m dressed well can boost my confidence and lift my mood. It’s nice to have a few things in the cupboard for special occasions or just because I fancy dressing up a bit.



Meanwhile I can just dream about being tall and slim with coat hanger shoulders, sailing up an escalator in my gorgeous understated clothes with my elbows akimbo, taking space in the world!

UFOs

Most knitters/quilters/embroiderers will confess to a couple of UnFinished Objects in their work basket. Some are abandoned happily, others we’re always meaning to get back to. My daughter Ruth and I recently had the experience of picking up someone else’s UFO and bringing it to fruition.
In one of those convoluted six-degrees-of-separation ways we were put in touch with someone we already knew who was looking for a quilter to complete a quilt for his mother. His mother is very elderly and ill and he had come across a quilt she had started some years ago and thought it would be good to get it finished.

What Ruth and I were presented with turned out to be eleven completed square blocks which had been constructed in a variety of hand-sewn methods and quite a bit of spare fabric. We were given free rein to get on with it as we saw fit. It seemed important to us to use what we had been given as simply as possible and not get fancy with it. After some initial consultation we made our decisions surprisingly quickly and became a sort of quilting tag team.



Ruth created one more square based on some partially assembled scraps. I finished off the sashing borders around each square. Thus far we stuck with the hand sewing, but knew that we would have to get out the machines to finish it within a reasonable time.

I put the squares together and assembled the quilt top by machine. Then Ruth took on the assembly of a backing piece using a variety of fabrics from the work basket.

She added a binding strip and, using some quilt wadding from my stash, pinned together the quilt sandwich. I took it back and spent a couple of evenings hand-quilting very simply along the seam lines of the squares. I hand-stitched the binding fabric to finish the quilt. The finished article is about the right size for a cot.

In all it took us about a fortnight to finish - much quicker than we would have been working alone! We both enjoyed the process, delighting in the sense of continuity with another needle-woman. It was such fun to rummage through someone else’s workbasket (finding a couple of other UFOs in the process).

We were both also pretty anxious about taking liberties with someone else’s work. We had no idea what the original plan had been and worried that the lady in question might feel affronted by some of the decisions we had taken. Thankfully this proved not to be the case. I was taken to meet her and deliver the quilt on a day when she was feeling reasonably well and visiting neighbours for coffee. The quilt soon became the focus of conversation and memory as she pointed out some of the fabrics which had originally been used in her children’s clothing. I have heard since that the project is still proving a successful talking point in the family.

It makes me wonder what unfinished items will be hanging around in my work-basket when I die.
(I didn’t take work-in-progress photos I’m afraid, so what you see is the finished quilt in all its squidgy, lumpy glory – very difficult to photograph)

wanna sing with a live band?

Well no, I really, really don't want to, but on the other hand one of the things I have started doing since I retired is singing with a community choir. Community choirs are popular these days and some, like the wonderful Gasworks Choir, have waiting lists. I would normally have been very reticent about joining a choir. I’m one of those people who have never felt I was able to sing.
This choir is different though. It started as an arts initiative by our local GP Practice who had funding for a whole series of “Never Too Late To Create” workshops. The participants were mainly older patients with mental health problems and/or chronic illness. One of the GPs who was closely involved with the groups has noted that the music/singing groups were especially popular and that involvement with singing appeared to increase self-confidence, produced improvements in mood and helped people to socialise with others and build supportive friendships. Since the NTLTC funding finished the choir has evolved into an independent group (the Big Friendly Choir), which is open (and free) to all regardless of health/age/ability. I was encouraged to join by a friend who was already a member.
I have come to really enjoy and value my Thursday morning sing! Our musical director, Mark Lawrence, is wonderfully encouraging and inclusive, and draws performances from us that we didn’t know we were capable of. There are one or two very talented singers with lovely voices who can sing harmonies, but the majority of us (like me) only feel safe singing with others. When I first joined I didn’t realise that public performance would be part of the deal and was acutely embarrassed at the prospect. I am still not confident about my own singing but have come to see that it’s about the group and what we can achieve together. We normally have a modest end of term concert in a cafe/gallery, but have also sung in a residential home; as part of the local Arts Trail; and at Bristol Central Library. In December we will be singing for the pleasure(!) of shoppers in Asda, with a group of children’s choirs in St George’s, Bristol and at the Central Library once more.
Most choirs charge their members a (sometimes substantial) fee, but this one is free and because of that we are regularly looking for funding. At the moment we have enough in the kitty to take us to Christmas and are awaiting the outcome of two funding applications. It seems that one of the things that I see as the choir’s greatest advantages – the fact that it is open to everyone – can be a disadvantage when applying for funds. If it were just for older people, or just for people with long-term health problems there would be a definite “peg” to hang it on, but the fact that we are a mixed group who have come together and formed a choral relationship regardless of problems seems to put us in a special category. There are people in the choir who could probably afford to pay for their sessions, but it would be invidious to create a sort of two-tier membership. This will be an ongoing situation for us, so if you know any funders/charities who might consider supporting us let me know!
We were recently recorded at one of our regular Thursday rehearsals singing a four-part round of This Old Freedom Train and published on YouTube!

habit forming

It’s over three months since my last post. I’m very much more a blog reader than a blogger, but that is all about to change! I have been alerted in one of the blogs I read to the fact that November is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). She also points out the oft-quoted “fact” that it only takes thirty repetitions to create a new habit (to be honest that’s never worked for me where exercise is concerned). But, having been conscious of my lack of blogitivity of late, I decided I am up for the challenge.
I do often have thoughts about a blog post running around my head – just as I often mentally draft letters or emails to friends, but don’t get round to sending them. Putting it all into practice is the big thing though and if the commitment is just for a month maybe I can do it and renew my blogging mojo.
One of the things that often keeps me from blogging is lack of illustrations. I’m not a person who photographs life as I go along, and so many of the blogs I visit have truly beautiful photos on them that I can feel a little intimidated. A post like this one is particularly hard to illustrate – nothing that I’ve made/or eaten/or seen to show off. Having trawled my photo archive I’ve chosen to illustrate the habit that comes easily to me and needs little or no reinforcement!
The question now is will I be able to think of something to say every day, and will it be interesting? Probably not – but only time will tell.