comparisons

Not long after we moved to Bristol an American friend arrived to visit us and memorably (if rather exaggeratedly) enthused "wow, I'm thinking - San Francisco!" I think she must have been treated to a switchback ride on the Bristol hills with their fleeting glimpses up the Avon Gorge to the suspension bridge. There are parts of the riverside in central Bristol which show a distinct homage to Venice. The Granary on Welshback, for example - one of my favourite buildings. (photo copyright Linda Bailey licensed under this Creative Commons License)

I was sitting with a cup of coffee on the harbourside this morning, looking across the water towards the Hotwells and Clifton slopes. I thought that the backs of the houses clinging to the side of the hill behind the new apartments reminded me (a little) of an Italian hill town.
And then I thought - why this constant need for comparison? It's Bristol - and it's great. I love it.

catch up

A bit of a catch up of finished objects, completed during the past few months.

This is a travelling sketch book set made for Ruth's birthday in March.



And this is Elijah, made for Rosa:


It was his delicious feet that made me fall for the pattern.
And his wise eyes.

finally!

That's "finally" as in "finally I'm back", but also "finally" as in "finally I've finished my Cortona quilt. It is so called because the design is inspired by some tiles I admired in the church of Santa Margareta in Cortona when we were there on holiday five years ago. The little squares echo a rounded notch in the tiles which makes them look a little like jigsaw pieces. I drew the line at trying to cut and stitch curves! I bought the fabrics and got to work pretty soon after we came back, but putting it together was a pretty fiddly and repetititve business that I could only face in small doses. And to be fair to myself I have completed a lot of other things in the meantime. The photographs don't really do the colour justice - it's a pale sage-y green. The quilt is now in its planned home - on the bed in our spare bedroom where it looks cool and peaceful.

Service will be resumed

Very conscious of not posting anything for a very long time. (Not that I imagine anyone's waiting with bated breath!). It's actually not for want of things to blog about - there are a number of Finished Objects that have been photographed and I have had a big and special birthday. The fact is I haven't really been able to concentrate. I am retiring at the end of the month and, although I don't work full-time, most of my random access memory has been consumed by thoughts of handing over the job in a healthy state to my successor, pensions and planning for post-retirement life.

The other barrier to posting is that this computer, which belongs to the office, is fairly new and needs to be passed on to my successor. I have been asked not to get it all clogged up with too much personal stuff, so I'm not uploading photos.

After Easter I'm going on a post-retirement retreat and hope to come back ready for anything!

breakfast

I love breakfast. I wake hungry and could never skip breakfast. I really like the fact that these days people go out for breakfast, meet for breakfast, linger over breakfast. Personally I'm not a fan of the Full English which leaves me feeling stodgy and bloated all morning. Most mornings I make myself a modest bowl of porridge with raisins and a banana, or a couple of weetabix with skimmed milk and a banana (heated in the microwave until the milk is hot and the banana takes on a squidgy sweetness). Today I decided to give my breakfast a little more attention. I had been talking with a friend about mindfulness, so today I made and ate my breakfast mindfully. I had a small bowl of lightly spiced apricots with vanilla yogurt and two slices of wholemeal toast with apricot conserve. To draw it all together and make it a minor feast for the senses and the mind I made myself a pot of spicy chai - fragrant with the scents of cinnamon and cardomom. I enjoyed the gentle pace and the flavours and the aroma and the fact that the spices in the tea echoed the spices in the apricots and yogurt and the apricots were repeated in the conserve. A little piece of culinary poetry to start the day!

26 postcards

I'm not a great one for New Year Resolutions - they've always seemed a bit fakey and artificial to me, expecting life to change as a result of a particular day in the year.

This year, however, I have got one. I want to keep in touch more with my distant friends. There really are no excuses for not sending the occasional "how are you" email and Facebook makes that kind of casual contact very easy. Not everyone uses Facebook, however, and this Christmas has brought news of really big things in people's lives (the death of a spouse, major surgery for a daughter) that I knew nothing about. In the days when I lived in the same town as these people there was no need of special keeping in touch - we saw each other at the shops, we visited each other's houses, we knew what was going on. Now that we live in different places it has proved harder to keep that awareness of other people's lives.

So this year I will be sending emails to old friends. Some of them will no doubt wonder what has come over me - why do I think they need news of me? In actual fact I will be sending some of my news in the hope that they will reciprocate with some of theirs.

As an additional impetus to my good resolution I have bought myself a diary which includes 26 detachable postcards inserted between the weeks of the year. My plan is to wing off a postcard to someone in my address book every fortnight during the year.

reading list 2009

For the first time ever I decided to record what I read this year. As part of my 50 before 60 manifesto I set myself the task of reading at least two books a month, with the additional challenge of making one in five of them something a bit harder – non-fiction or maybe a classic I’d never got round to before. The first part was fairly easy, but I’m not sure that I actually achieved the second part. Although I’m a fairly prolific reader, I’m basically lazy – preferring a story to an intellectual challenge.

It’s a fairly hotch potch list – some of which is almost embarrassing to publish! There’s a fair amount of crime fiction in there which I always turn to when I don’t know what else to go for. There’s at least one book in the list that I can no longer remember reading and a couple that were accidental re-reads, discovering partway through that I had been here before, but couldn’t really remember how it finished. I acquire my reading matter in several different ways – presents, occasionally buying new, sometimes buying second-hand from GreenMetropolis or charity shops, sometimes borrowing from the library. I belong to a reading group, so 8 or 10 books each year are read for discussion; I follow up recommendations from friends and reviews I’ve seen, but charity shop books can turn up some unexpected treasure (as well as a lot of trash). Kat Pomfret’s Paradise Jazz was one such jewel, read late in the year – I’d never heard of her, but found myself beguiled. Others that I enjoyed enough to recommend are highlighted below:

Barbara Kingsolver: Prodigal Summer
Muriel Barbery: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Penelope Lively: Consequences
Kate Atkinson: Case Histories
Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist
Melvyn Bragg: Credo
Anne Tyler: A Patchwork Planet
Tom Wright: Surprised by Hope
Stef Penney: The Tenderness of Wolves
Sebastian Barry: The Secret Scripture
Whitney Otto: How to make an American Quilt
Peter Robinson: Playing with Fire
Lillian Harry: Dance Little Lady
Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost
Barbara Vine: The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
Stieg Larssen: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Gail Godwin: Father Melancholy's Daughter
Dan Rhodes: Gold
Barbara Trapido: Brother of the More Famous Jack
John Drane: Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual
Sophie Parkin: All grown up
Barbara Trapido: The Travelling Hornplayer
Jill Dawson: The Great Lover
Cecilia Aherne: Thanks for the Memories
D S & M Linn: Sleeping with Bread
Libby Purves: Shadow Child
Bella Pollen: Chasing Unicorns
Joanne Harris: The Lollipop Shoes
Rob Bell: Velvet Elvis
Debra Adelaide: The Household Guide to Dying
Bella Pollen: Midnight Cactus
Michael Dibdin: The End Times
Guillermo Martinez: The Oxford Murders
Iain Pears: Giotto's Hand
Jamila Gavin: Coram Boy
Lauren Weisberger: The Devil Wears Prada
Sebastian Faulks: Engleby
Chris Sunderland: The Dream that inspired the Bible
John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany
Paulo Coelho: The Pilgrimage
Rosie Thomas: A Simple Life
Sarah Harrison: Heaven's on Hold
Kat Pomfret: Paradise Jazz
Ian Rankin (Jack Harvey): Bleeding Hearts