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.

House Work

From Spinach and Yoga.

About a year ago, I was away from home for three or four days. Piglet was in school and I made arrangements for her to go to various friends afterwards. I set out all the clothes needed before I left. I made a list with details of what the Fella should feed himself, the two of them, on which days; who she was with on any given day and their contact numbers; a few domestic tasks which I asked the Fella to undertake in my absence. (Thursday: Put out bins!)

I was tempted to blog about how ridiculous it was to make this list for a grown man. Then I had a rethink.

Available from Abe Books

The Sporting Piglet

From Playing with Pigs

Yesterday Piglet came out of school and said: "You have to get me shin guards for tomorrow."

I do not like to hear a piglet say "you have to," without some honorific title, I prefer something like: "O noble mater familias who bore me amid unbelievable pain and suffering and has nurtured me at considerable cost to your social life ever since, I beg of you humbly on my knees ..."

The Sandwich Generation

From CareStation

They call us the sandwich generation. We are the ones who care simultaneously for elderly relatives and young children. It feels like a personal struggle sometimes. It comes from a number of sociological phenomena.

London Excursion

James McNeill Whistler:
Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea

As Piglet is of that age when she can appreciate such things, we took her up to London for a few days, and I thought I would note here some helpful tips for others intending to head up to the big smoke.