Half Term Holiday

Luckily Piglet is a keen baker. We have been catching up on The Great British Bakeoff on i-player and enjoying watching the beautiful concoctions the competitors come up with. I thought of this scheme which would occupy two days of the holiday in a useful and nourishing fashion:
Day 1: bake cakes. 
Day 2: invite other little piglets round to eat them. 

Mummy in the Museum (ho ho) - Excursion

Available from Hive.

Not only is it half term, the teachers decided to have extra celebrations by enjoying an INSET day on the Friday before. For once I realised this was coming up, instead of finding out the day beforehand, and was able to make cunning plans accordingly. I had seen that there is an obscure little Egyptology museum on the University of Swansea campus and this seemed so hilarious that it had to be visited. I envisioned some dark poky place with glass cabinets of dusty amulets.

What better time to go than in the lead up to Halloween! Some children on a trip to an obscure little Egyptology museum in darkened university buildings? I'm sure there must already be a film about it.

Eyetests for early years piglets

From Iederene's blog

I have sadly realised that I ought to have taken Piglet for an early eyetest. I thought that she would have her eyes tested at school, or that if there were a problem teachers would pick up on it. Now I realise I just should have taken her along to the optician like I take her to the dentist. After all, it's free for children. 

Late Roses

Usually there is some bright sunny leftover summer weather at the start of September. This year, it was a real autumn start to the school term with weather as soft and damp as a baby’s backside – necessitating hanging out laundry for three days to get it dry.

The roses seemed to like this weather. All of them made a sudden late show.

 









The Molyneux. (Guess what football team we support.) 


 
 

Work In Progress

I've had this cardigan since the last recession. I bought it in the Scottish Borders when I was an undergrad.

Charming Autumn Bracelet

This is Asprey’s delightful seasonal bracelet. Instead of buying it, I cut the picture of it out of the FT Weekend How to Spend It magazine. (For free, LOL, I get a lot of nice things out of the FT Weekend How to Spend It magazine. I have stuck the bracelet on a letter to my mum.)

Season of Mists

Image from Dept. of Culture,
Media and Sport blog

Although Piglet does more of the 3 'R's than when she first started school, she still comes home with artwork, is encouraged to take part in sports, goes for day trips to museums and parks. I wonder sometimes what world she is being prepared for. I look at people in the adult world of work and they seem too busy, too tired to go for group walks,sit down and sketch, join a five-a-side football team. As people hit middle age and their cholesterol levels rise, they often hark back to the years when they played sport at school. It seems a pity we don't have a society that continuously encourages such activities.

I like British Buddhists for the way that as adults they will do collective art projects, engage in nature and everyday meditation.

I don't want to join in with them, LOL. If I go along to British Buddhist events, they treat me with cautious reverence - as if I might innately know more about Buddhist philosophy via my Japanese blood than they do through their years of study. It makes me feel like when we were children and our cat had an eye infection. To remind us to apply its ointment one of us stuck up a picture of an eye over the kitchen doorway. Visitors used to ask in hushed voices what it was. We would say: "Oh. It's to do with our grandmother's religion. Don't talk about it." We would snigger and kick each other like children. (Well, we were children, LOL.)

The taste of madeleine cakes provokes
vivid memories of childhood for Proust.
Image from French Embassy site.

I don't paint well (does that matter? not to Buddhists) and since tearing up my knee at rugby I don't do much sport (other than high speed Piglet pursuit). I do have Piglet, so I do fun things with her, pretending that it's part of being a mum as opposed to just fun. I also blog, so I decided to make an Autumn Collection, like the Spring Collections fashion houses put together; a sort of Proustian set of ephemeral moments captured in picture, sound and text.  

Pots of herbs at Dyffryn Gardens

O Wild West wind, thou breath of autumn’s being ... 

Autumn is my favourite time of year. Colours are soft and warm. I start fetching out woolen garments.

I collect things from the hedgerows.