New Year's Eve 2010...

As we release the lanterns to wish each other Happy New Year, it's hard to believe 2010 has gone... when I look at my list from 1st January to see what I have done (and not!) 
I can see that it might have taken a year to even contemplate starting, let alone completing it. I have done some of it :-) &
it's been good! Happily we haven't lost anyone in our family this year. I have seen more of my brother than in previous years. My only nephew has announced his engagement at the ripe old age of 28. My cousins keep watch over their mum who will be 100 in 2011. 
So, retirement huh? I have been 'working towards' stopping working, and I seem to be seeing the other side of life a little bit more. The trick appears to stay being "me" and to do these other things with as much gusto and concentration, as much dedication as I gave to Work! Booking on courses, meeting with friends - I put them into the diary - it looks just-as-busy-as-ever! That way I have Garden House-gardened, allotmented, played music on my own anglo-concertina, taken a chair apart and half-reupholstered it, seen lovely old friends from over 30 years ago, gone to exhibitions, concerts, taken short breaks... celebrated as much retirement as necessary (yes, sneaked in a bit of paid work too!) Being supported in it by Michael has been great, so when he planned the 5 week trip to France & Spain down to the very last B&B, I felt the buzz of the "busy-ness" and the security of the blanket. Yes, Little Miss Busy's story has been mine. 

• I succeeded in taking 2 days during the week to play as well as the weekends.
• I did have Wednesday as a French day - I finished the French Diploma from the University of Brighton, and I went to the Jeudi Matin music session in the morning, n-e-a-r-l-y every week.
• I started to learn to play the anglo-concertina!
• I've got quotes for new windows on the ground floor
• I've been a bit creative - drawing, sewing, mainly
• I kept a cloud diary of sorts - an unlabelled photo collection!
• I am booked on the Community Cookery Leader course, preparing for a work opportunity related to cookery. The rest are hobbies!

Things not done as completely as planned:

• I took weekly photos that were linked to my retirement activities, but I didn't necessarily make links between permaculture design and life course theory! Maybe that was too complex a connection to attempt, to help the theoretical side of retirement make sense... I have been living it! So it will need a redesign - you could say I have used this blog as a year's "observation log" and now I start the analysis towards a design... maybe a book about retirement and its distractions?
• Ooops, no, I didn't take a long walk out in the fresh air once a week, although I did accompany Mandy on some of her walks... but not enough! It's on the list for 2011, and that will include having lunch too.
• Well, it's a constant task, to clear the garden, so no surprises it doesn't look its best now. A greenhouse would need a complete reshape of the space  :-(
• Now there is an incentive to declutter the house as we need to squeeze two of us into it! Luckily arch-declutterer Mandy has offered to help, so we can get on with going through and listing what needs to go from each room... then get it to a boot sale.
• House maintenance is becoming a priority, so linking it to other things will be more efficient. The back wall needs repointing because of damage caused by next door's broken guttering - if getting that sorted can be tied in with the windows, that'd be the most useful plan for this year.
• I don't think I want to develop my dance career! French dance is my passion and I want to do more of it but not much more of anything else... though there's a plan for a small circle dance ensemble ;-)

Things done instead, or as well as:

• Le Grand Tour de la Retraite! 5 weeks of bliss (apart from the head cold) in France and Spain, seeing wonderful things, staying in great places (from a YHA to a 5* hotel), meeting lovely people in the Basque country, Cordoba, Orihuela, Melle (though we missed Benoit Guerbigny by a day)... 
• Beginning to upload my own Portfolio for the Permaculture Diploma, which was awarded in 2004!
• The Garden House Friday Group has helped me to think systematically about the garden, and to consider the greenhouse idea... it might be easier to move and get a bigger garden with an existing greenhouse!
• Plans have been done to convert the loft into a room...
• Sour Dough breadmaking - a real success, with culture from my own living space!

Well, I'm off to dance the New Year in ... what will I do in 2011? 


See my new blog... Boundaries of Home

Escape to Spain...

Christmas sunset 

After our cold Christmas, Yannick le technicien came on Monday and fixed the bruleur on the furnace... but we'd already decided to go to Spain for our last two days. The saints in aran sweaters are in the mountains just south of the border; the sunset is Roses, where we spent the night looking over the sea. We ate at La Gallega de Roses, a seashell encrusted Galician restaurant where - at last! - I had seiche à la planxa (my usual last-night-of-the-holidays meal in Prades). 

St Pierre de Rodes

Shell encrusted Galician restaurant

Tango lessons

On our way back to the hotel we heard the strains of exotic music, and snuck a look into the tango lesson!
There's something a bit more lively about northern Spain at Christmas, compared with that southern bit of France. A lovely peaceful & quiet time can be had in the PO, the Muscat de Noel is made especially in September and the local food is great. People spend time on family visits, we do sunny walks up gently hillsides (because Canigo is not really open to climbers in winter). It's very quiet, few restaurants are open even at the seaside - one year we nipped over to Spain just for a cup of coffee, and realised the difference in ambiance! 

Empuries

Greek sandals!

   Now, flying to Girona means there's an excuse for visiting Figueras (the Dali museum), Cadaquès (Dali again & Picasso), mountain villages, and even as far as Barcelona! And the hot chocolate is fantastic! (Food's good in Girona airport departure lounge as well.) This time we ticked the Greek and Roman archeological sites at Empuriès off the list too.

Greek bird

Mosaic pavement from Roman city

Boxing Day at Canet Plage...

Looks lovely doesn't it, but... it was very windy as well as being sunny, the tops of waves whipping ... people bent over against the elements! We'd gone to Perpignan - no shops open! Wot, no Boxing Day sales?????

Bonne Fête de Noël...

25th December 2010 
Prades, PO, FRANCE


Blue sky and sunshine, the wind whipping powdery snow from the top of Canigó, the Catalan sacred mountain. A trip to see the Romanesque churches of the hills & valley - St Michel de Cuxa, Taurinya, Corneilla. Christmas dinner was Muscat de Noel, paté campagne, sea bream en croute de sel, and homemade Xmas pud, stuffed with a candied clementine and soaked in Armagnac, Blanquette de Limoux à boire. 

Pastorets de Mosset Pessebre Vivante...

Grumpy Angel (Arnaud) was tired after two hours on stage at Mosset's Pessebre Vivante last night. He brought Baby Jesus on, delivered him to Mary (not so much Virgin Birth as Voices Off), then had to sit listening to old people singing the nativity story (again!) for ages. The French Catalan version is set in the hilly Roussillon landscape and the Chorus of Bergers sing French and Catalan folksongs (Pastorets Alerta! & Salten i Ballen) and church carols (Joia en el Mon & Santa Nit, Silent Night) as the story unfolds. Local colour enters, in the shape of the Fisherfolk, a Sabotmaker, a bell ringing KnifeGrinder, Las Gitanas (castanets & a live chicken), the Woodsman & his rabbit, the Porcier and his pig, Les Etrangers (Dutch and Welsh in this production) and the Sardana dancers, who all bring their crafts and rustic gifts instead of the Wise Men's gold, frankincense and myrrh. At a suitable point the Devil roars in, all red lycra and black horns, poking his fork and lots of fun at the piousness of the shepherds. He is surrounded, vanquished, and then stamped into the earth with a circle dance by the little children singing Fum Fum Fum! All finished off with the Song of the Birds and a Russian carol: lovely! We then wound our way down the mountain road in the dark...

Winter morning moon over the Fenouilledes...

The morning of winter solstice saw an eclipse of the moon visible over Europe; the next morning this was the full moon rising at 8.41 GMT+1, taken through an open window, not through a glass darkly! The 'promise' of a rainy day did not materialise, for local shepherds nor for us.
A man that looks on glass, on it may stay his eye, or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, and then the heaven espy is the 2nd verse of a hymn written by mystical poet George Herbert in 1630 or so. Did he forsee the modern predeliction for taking pictures and not seeing the view beyond?
I've been playing from a little book of Christmas carol tunes, published in what looks like the 1950s, by Eleanor Franklin Pike. She wrote a couple of carols herself and slipped them into the book, and wasn't averse to nicking a hymn tune to put to other carols. I didn't recognise the words but one of the tunes (Sandys) was familiar and stayed in my head; eventually some words seeped forward 50 years into my consciousness to go with it... "makes that, and the action, fine". Googling, of course, brought it to screen in less than x seconds, and the original poem is a mystical piece by G Herbert which scarcely looks like a celebration of higher things. Rather the signifying of lowly things as higher level thought. The verse that escaped me is Herbert's 4th: A servant with this clause makes drudgery divine: who sweeps a room, as for Thy sake, makes that and the action fine. Hmmm, is this the excuse for sacred housework?  It got tampered with by John Wesley however, and the sweet poetry in this verse vanished.

Not to be opened til 25th December...

Cool yule, sweet solstice and merry christmas everybody...

The Garden House Brighton Christmas Lights

Save your *Cape Gooseberry 'lanterns' and dry them. Find some small christmas garland lights, and slip the lanterns over each little bulb... string up and switch on!


*Physalis alkekengi 

Time and Talents...

187 Bermondsey Street

Last week I stayed in London for a conference and opposite the apartment-hotel (get 'er!) near London Bridge there was this Art Nouveau-style building Time and Talents Settlement. Fascinated with what it might be and with a bit of websearching I found that it was a social movement where "ladies" with a bit of time on their hands keen to use their talents to look after the welfare of working women, in 1887. 
The Time & Talents charity has a modern version, which supports lots of women in the docks area of London, more likely to be young mothers and elderly groups now, of course. However more interesting might be the Visible in Stone website (English Heritage) which celebrates buildings associated with women's rights and suffrage and other historical matters around the country. (to be completd)

Brighton lights...

Dolphin fountain in Market Square

 Brighton does a nice line in Christmas lights, especially in the little places off the main shopping street. I found these two last week, the Boy & Dolphin fountain looking like the spray had frozen, in the air... In fact the spray had frozen on the ground and it was quite slippy underfoot.  It's quite hard to work out the perspective on this one, isn't it? 
The Pavilion lit in blue is a lovely feature of the town's display. It's the first time an ice rink has been put up in the grounds of the Pav, and people seem to be really enjoying it.

Ice Rink at Brighton Pavilion

There are a few houses lit up in the outlying districts, puffing trains carrying Santa, deer and sleighbells trotting across the front walls... I'll take a few pix and add to this entry as they appear...

Primetime Permaculture...

A few years ago I used a little bit of Gardener's World to create a teaching session about permaculture on TV... Monty Don was talking about and showing where permaculture principles were in use in a garden, but didn't actually use the P word - the game was for the watcher to Spot The Principle! Now, Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets featured nearly 5 minutes of it! Thanks to Maddy & Tim for the clip...



Meanwhile in my garden, the American Land Cress survived the -10 frost last night...  

Oh, so .... snowy!

Another 10 cms overnight if the hat on the lantern is anything to go by ... certainly the snow was over the boot-tops. 
And another retirement milestone passed today: the letter to say I get a Winter Fuel Allowance!


David & Felix made an igloo in the street... it was cosy inside, very quiet, and the light was more a blue colour than what has come out in this photo. For a while the gap in the wall looked like the famous photo from inside an iceberg...

igloo outside

Stanmer Street Slide

from the inside

Twingo-on-Ice

igloo doorway

Oh, so .... scary!

The QE2 Bridge, at the Dartford Crossing, 1st December at about noon... dark skies, snow at about 15 cms on the ground apart from this bit of road, which had been warmed up by lorries! A bit of a scary sandwich, but everyone was very courteous, lots of waving into lanes, etc. I lost 50p in the toll tho - can't throw accurately enough from the left-hand driver's seat of my Twingo! So, a four hour homeward trek from Essex... the M25 was like a wasteland - brownish scummy slush underwheel, a few bobbly icy bits, hardly anything on the road apart from the odd speedy 4x4. Still, that was better than the 10 hour sleeping-on-the-motorway I might have endured, thanks to my brother & sister-in-law's spare bedroom. Brighton looked better when I got back, though the hills render it as dangerous as the M25-on-Ice!

Rather different from the sunny scene the afternoon before in Lambourne End.