dovegreyreader scribbles

Pleasings No.2

It's time for some more Pleasings, especially after the week of relentless rain we have had, and whilst I know you may not have similar if you live in the Sahara or the Nullarbor Plain please substitute your own undesirable weather conditions...

And I'll make rain my first Pleasing because I have to turn this around, so I have decided it is finally time to embrace rain and stop looking on it as the enemy. Plus who would have thought I would take to dog-walking in the rain with such fondness. The kennel dogs have always been man's work so I tend not to get involved, but Little Nell is different, I am very much hands on so have purchased a voluminous mac (brown to match the dog and the mud)
Nell and I tramp across soggy stubble fields and down muddy lanes with gusto. She comes back looking the size of drowned guinea pig and I don't look much better but underneath it all I am dry. The Kayaker has taken some lovely pictures of Nell while he has been home, this is one of my favourites...
On the same subject i.e. dog walking, now I know why God made Jeggings. I had been wondering for quite a while. I wear both skinny jeans and leggings (not at the same time) with tunic dresses or jumpers, neither of which is suited to dog walking in the rain. On the other hand (or leg) M&S Jeggings, with their broad elasticated waistband, and a snip at £19 a pair, are a big Pleasing. Completely comfortable, lighter than denim and quick drying, warm but not hot, reasonably claw-proof, and they quickly slip into the wellies without any of this trying to tuck in a pair of trouser legs and then looking like I am wearing a doublet.

My next Pleasing is that we bade a fond farewell to the Kayaker as he set off for his two years discovering Australia this week. We had a family Christmas dinner last Sunday as he'll miss ours and it's a Pleasing in that we are thrilled and delighted that he is doing what he loves doing best... landing in a new city and quickly finding his feet...

...but saying the big goodbyes never comes easy. He has worked hard to save for this trip, and his two months home here with us this summer have been the best, we have had a really special time which all made the farewells a bit tearful, but happy tears. By the time you read this he will have landed in Melbourne via Dubai and Brunei and he has lots of plans afoot for discovering Australia.

Bookhound and I both had post-departure things planned to lift the spirits. Bookhound did the airport run and then called in for an overnight stay with his fisherfriends whilst, by the time you read this I will be on my way back from a knitting and natter day and a sleepover chez the Knit Angel. The challenge is for her to teach me to crochet, it's time I mastered that so I will report back.

Ambushed unexpectedly by the emotions of that farewell (he's twenty-nine for goodness' sake and has been going on working trips for years, I should be used to it by now) I put out a request on Twitter for some comfort reading. I had done myself no favours with that read of JKR in the run up and found myself a bit stranded by the tide of negativity I felt for The Casual Vacancy. Some wonderful suggestions came in including E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia, (have never read any and feel it's time I did) Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico, Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, anything by Barbara Pym, or Wodehouse

This lovely poem was suggested by Daisy Godwin...which made me cry even more, but in a nice way.

Walking Away

A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

C.Day Lewis

I did rescue myself from drowning in reading melancholia with Philip Hensher's new book. The Missing Ink, The Lost Art of Handwriting and Why it Still Matters. Trust me you will ALL want this book, and I will be sharing much more about it very soon, but get it on your Christmas list quick before someone buys you Volume Two of Wayne Rooney's life or something.

So over to you... any more comfort read suggestions??

What works for you??

And your Pleasings too of course...

 

Pleasings ...

Pleasings... that might not be a word, but Friday always feels like a good day to think about things I have been pleased about this week, and they are numerous and not necessarily in order of pleasingness and this first picture is not exactly riveting, but my joy is unconfined on all counts...

Bookhound and the Kayaker have sanded and re-varnished the Book Room windows outside before the winter...

And they have swept the chimney to my woodburner and cleaned the flue, so it is all ready for ignition...

It has been The Kayaker's turn to be Best Man at a friend's wedding. He apparently 'nailed' his speech and the bride very kindly sent him back with one of the table arrangements for me. The scents have been wafting across my desk all week...

Someone who reads here very kindly sent me an Orla Kiely scarf because they saw them and remembered how much I loved Orla Kiely. This arrived in the post when I was a few hours into a long session of my online day job on the Cancer & Serious Illness morning. Opening this package was a very big pleasing indeed.

I realised, thanks to Clare Balding, that I might like reading autobiographies after all, so when Dreaming in Colour by Kaffe Fassett arrived, and on the day I finished My Animals and Other Family, I moved seamlessly from horses to knitting, simple as that.

My lasting recollection of Caitlin (apparently pronounced Catlin) Moran was the fact that she had written one of Offspringette's very most favourite books The Chronicles of Narmo, a book that Offspringette would never part with. I somehow by-passed How to be a Woman, and will catch up with it when I feel the need, but I was pleasingly pleased with the arrival of Moranthology, some collected and very funny writings by Caitlin 'Catlin' Moran. I have made a start and am chuckling merrily.

I had an e mail from a psychologist by the name of Miles Richardson who asked if I would be interested in reading his book Needwood..a simple journey into the local countryside which pulls out a universal story about out connection to nature and the landscape. The book is ringingly endorsed by Professor Paul Gilbert, author of The Compassionate Mind, of which I am a huge fan, so of course I said yes please and thank you very much.

And my final pleasing, and remember I said in no particular order. The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane , a book we have loved and championed here, has been long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. I said, in front of Robert and an audience, as I introduced him atPort Eliot Festival, that if the book didn't win prizes I would eat my walking boots, so I am delighted that I have now taken the first step along the way to not having to munch my Scarpas. 

And as I think about my Pleasings and record them here it has been to a background of Rhosymedre by Vaughan Williams playing on the radio. It is the music I walked down the aisle to thirty-six years ago last week and I still love to hear it. I remember wanting a gentle entrance rather than a fanfare.

The Tinker has had his day surgery on his outer ear, plus a bit of plastic surgery reconstruction on it too, and he is thankfully recovering well, albeit bemoaning that his profile is now ruined and he might have to have the other one done to match etc. I also want to send our good wishes for a speedy recovery to Erika, a regular here, who has had surgery this week too.

Oh yes, and one more late entry for this week's Pleasings... Offspringette, now settled in her first teaching job, heard that she has the funding, via her school, to finish the dissertation element of her Masters degree in Education. Hooray.

So how about you...any Pleasings for you this week?? No matter how seemingly small it would be very pleasing to hear about them.