Pink

I bought the most beautiful jacket last Saturday. Bright pink at the top and dip-dyed to a toe-curling scarlet at the bottom. Not exactly a shrinking-violet of a jacket. More - well, screaming out loud fantabulous.

I was going to wear it to work on Monday, had it out and hanging ready. Looked at it in the morning light and didn't feel brave enough. I always feel blue on Mondays. And tired and bad-tempered and scratchy. So it stayed on the hanger and I wore something boring and inconspicuous instead - black, probably.

I'm going to get it out again, ready for tomorrow. Will I be brave enough?

Green

I'm not sure it can get better than this. It's a June evening, clear blue sky. The garden is lush and healthy and really really green. There are new potatoes, and broad beans, and more strawberries than we shall ever eat. With a bit more rain the peapods will swell. There's a decent crop of blackcurrants coming and the raspberries are nearly ripe.
Husband is downstairs watching something violent on the television with Cat contentedly asleep beside him. Son is crouched over i-Player in the back room, hooting over a puerile comedy; Daughter splashing happily in the bath.
I'm listening to early Dylan and wondering why and how it can make me feel young again.
Does it get better than this?

Holiday ends

I reckon my week off as having ended about 5.30 on Friday evening - the point where I would usually have been leaving work and coming home. The rest of it is just the weekend that I would have had anyway.
On the basis of the last week, I'm not ready for retirement yet. Even though the weather has been a bit iffy, it hasn't justified the amount of aimless drifting and time-wasting that has been going on. I've been bored and fretful and unable to focus on anything. Retirement will be a disaster if it's going to be like this.
Things cheered up on Friday when Daughter and I went into London - somewhere to go! Something to do!
And now, as the weekend starts to run out as well, suddenly I'm busy trying to finish all the things I could have done days ago if I had been motivated enough and, being busy, I'm much happier.
Somewhere around 5 or 6 o'clock tonight the usual Sunday gloom will descend, as I clear up stuff in the garden and start to get ready for Monday and the working week. It was undeniably nice last Sunday when there wasn't the same gloom. And then I'll start to think that retirement might be nice after all.

Dogs

I went across to the local college yesterday afternoon - it's just across the main road from us - for their "Summe Fayre". It used to be an agricultural college, but it's trying to rebrand itself and get rid of the image of being full of students doing gardening because they are too thick to do anything else. It still concentrates on animal care and floristry and beauty and is still full of students who flunked their GCSEs. Anyway. I've been to their events before, and they were quite fun when the children were small, but I haven't been for ages, so I thought I'd give it another go.

It wasn't great, to be honest, not least because I couldn't find the tea tent. Three ice-cream vans and a barbecue, but nowhere it was possible to get just a cup of tea. A summer fair (or even, fayre) and no tea tent? Mad.

But I was riveted by the dog agility team doing a demonstration in the main arena (or, roped off bit of field). Good grief, they were awful. They followed the cattle show (which looked to me like five or six calves being led round on pieces of string although the MC was assuring us that this was an impressive demonstration of a marketable skill - and I'm afraid you could tell that the students weren't the brightest when the girl with the shovel and bucket ended up at the FRONT of the parade). They spent the first half-hour erecting the course. There must have been a dozen people doing this, apparently without any pre-conceived plan. So by the time the dogs appeared I was already bored.

If I were to be involved in dog agility classes (and admittedly this is pretty unlikely) the first thing I would want to do is to make sure my dog was obedient. Taking a dog into an arena full of equipment, and surrounded by people, without having any control over it, is not a good idea. The MC (a different one from the MC that had managed the cattle show) seemed to think it was enormously funny and expected us to think so too but, as no dog lover myself, I was a little nervous when it became clear that with the larger dogs there were extra handlers posted around the arena in case the dogs ran wild and started eating the small children. (And why do small children offer their hands so keenly to vast brutes with enormous teeth? I keep my hands in my pockets).

Even more frightening than the dogs were their handlers. Or owners. Or "mummies and daddies" as the MC called them. For a start, as I've already said, they appeared to have little control over their dogs. And many of them seemd to have selected the most unattractive dogs they could find. I am no purist when it comes to animals - I don't particularly value pedigree - but I swear to God there were two dogs there which had front legs longer than their back legs. But it was the size of them that was startling. (The size of the owners, that is). I would have thought that one of the reasons for dog-owning is to give you a reason for going out each day and taking exercise. Some of these owners could barely waddle, which is quite a disadvantage when you are supposed to be racing round the ring with your dog as it goes flying up and over and through all manner of obstacles. As a dog-owners agility demonstration it was pitiful.

So the whole thing only supported my belief that intellectuals prefer cats.

Holiday begins

I am at the start of a week off - no plans to go anywhere, just a few days at home. I need a break - it's been grind grind grind at work lately and not enough laughs. So, not having any plans, I have the illusion of lots of time and nothing much to do, and this first day have pretty much frittered my time away.

I walked down to the supermarket and back this morning, so I've had some exercise, and bought the ingredients for the weekend meals. Even that was a bit unfocussed, because although I have a concept for tonight's supper I don't really have a recipe, and it'll either be a triumph or a disaster.

I've done a bit of cleaning, including changing sheets and pushing the hoover into corners of the bedroom where it doesn't usually go, and I've also had a bit of a go at the kitchen. I cleaned the fridge (the inside of it, anyway) and found some quite remarkable unpleasantnesses. Believe me that marzipan goes really hard when it is six years past its use-by date. There were also some pots of things that I'm not sure what they used to be, but I doubt it was as fizzy as they are now. Some rancid nastinesses have been liberated into landfill and some foul encrustations have been picked off (by fingernail where necessary). Whoever designed that fridge had no thought for the people who would have to clean it, or he wouldn't have put in so many grooves and crevices. At least it is clean now, and no fear that a green greasy hand is going to come at you when you open the door, and drag you inside.

Then I attacked the sink and scoured it - even the bit underneath the thing that fits into the drain (does it have a name?) - and scrubbed the draining rack and the washing-up bowl, and put soda down the drain. It all looks very shiny now, but it won't last. Cleaning really is a complete waste of time.

There are all sorts of things that I could be doing, but I don't think I feel like doing any of them.Husband has just suggested going to the pub, so I'm off.