School Plays

As a parent I have, over the years, attended many school plays, nativities and concerts.  As a parent I'm supposed to say that these were all wonderful experiences that made me proud, and that they were all precious moments that I will cherish for ever as I think back on the formative years of all my beautiful daughters.  However, as a parent I have taught my children to be honest, and it’s something I feel is a very important principle to live by.  So let me be honest.  Some of those concerts and plays were just the most mind numbingly boring and excruciatingly awful moments of my life.  Obviously my girls are enormously talented and just shone out in whichever way they were taking part, and if the concert I was having to sit through was all being performed by them, then they would have all been the best shows ever.

Now, let me be clear on this, I’m not talking about all the shows or concerts my girls took part in when they were in orchestras or theatre groups, as on the whole these were pretty darn good and very enjoyable, and they weren’t the only talented ones there.  No, I’m talking about school plays and concerts where everyone had to take part despite that fact that some of the children clearly didn’t want to be there and even more clearly had no talent whatsoever.  I’m talking squeaky recorders, out of tune brass groups, guitar ensembles that couldn’t play in time with each other, violins that, well, you know, kids on violins, and orchestras that didn’t seem to understand the concept of staying in tune, and I’m supposed to sit there and smile and act like it’s the best thing ever, and I did try to, but on the inside I died a little each time.  As the girls got older, the performances got better because the groups they were involved in were more practiced and more dedicated.

Tonight I went to daughter number four’s A ’level drama performance.  Katy wasn’t acting herself, but she had designed and built the stage set and lighting for one of the groups which she has been given an A for.  Nice one Katy.  Anyway, the pieces the two groups were performing were expressionist theatre, or in other words, a bit weird and designed to make you feel uncomfortable and have deep thoughts about the subject matter.  They were cheery little presentations about schizophrenia and prostitutes.  Now, I have to say this is not my idea of an entertaining evening, in fact, when the first group started the thought that ran through my head was “oh my goodness, I’m going to have to sit through about twenty minutes of this shiz”.  This was the schizophrenia piece.  A couple of the girls gave some decent performances in parts, but on the whole it was just too bizarre for my taste.

The prostitutes were much more likeable.  This was Katy’s group.  Whilst this piece also tackled a difficult subject, it was less “out there”.  It made much more sense, and I really enjoyed the portrayal of the different characters.  It was designed to show the girls as birds in cages, on display.  Throughout the performance you got to hear a monologue by each of them telling their story.  This for me was much more powerful than the first group who just seemed to spend most of the time crawling around the floor and repeating the same things over and over again and all at the same time.  All in all, I prefer my theatre with a proper story and a happy ending.

Project 366

I’ve been busy all day with work and college, so haven’t had time to write anything until now.  It’s bedtime, but I can’t go to that happy place until I’ve written my 500 words.  This is not the only project I am taking part in this year.  I’m also doing project 365, although this year it’s project 366 because it’s a leap year.  In case you aren’t aware of what that is, it’s when you take a photograph each day of the year and post it on the social media platform of your choice.  I’m posting mine to Instagram and Facebook.  So far I haven’t missed a day.  I’ve come close a few times, like today when nothing interesting happened and it’s nearly over, so I’m desperately looking around the house for something that could be vaguely worth photographing that might look at least pretty if not particularly interesting.  Funnily enough, just a few seconds after I’d posted today’s meagre offering, one of my friends commented that she loved it.  Just goes to show that you don’t know what is really going to be appealing to people.

Whilst I’m doing this, I’m keenly aware that people could very quickly become bored if I keep taking photos of my dogs and my beloved grandson, so it’s quite a challenge to find new things, which I suppose is part of the point of the project in the first place.  It challenges you to open your eyes and look around.  It challenges you to look at your world with different eyes and appreciate the small things just as much as the big things.  My photos so far have varied between a simple plate of toasted crumpets with peanut butter on them, to an old wooden pier on one of my favourite beaches on a sunny day.

My drive to work produces some lovely morning scenes, but I’m always in too much of a rush to stop and take a picture of them.  The motorway I have to get to is up a hill, and on these cold winter mornings when there has been fog around, I’ve reached the M65 to find bright sunshine and a blue sky and looking back into the valley you can see a beautiful blanket of fog covering the ground for quite a few miles.  Of course it would be completely illegal for me to stop on the hard shoulder just to take a photo of this, and I fear that I may never capture the scene.  While I’m typing this, I’m formulating a plan that might help me get this elusive shot, but it will involve a combination of the perfect foggy morning and me getting up particularly early in order to drive to a good spot with legal parking before the fog clears.  Something tells me this may not happen, as I love my bed and usually wait until the last possible minute to part from it each morning.

At the end of the year, my plan is to get all of them printed in a photobook so that I can easily look back on 2016 and hopefully remember where and why I took each one of them.

Here are a couple of my favourites so far.

This Little Girl

Lottie joined our family on the 9^th of January this year when she was exactly eight weeks old.  I’m not entirely sure why or how this happened.  I’m a cat person.  I always have been and I always will be.  I did have a dog when I was 18 called Ralph Waldo Emerson III who was just a wonderful boy.  I have no idea what different breeds were all mixed up in his genetics, but he was fast, I can tell you that.  Since he died, it’s been cats all the way.  Many, many cats over the years.  Some made it to a good age and some were taken too soon.  After losing two in relatively quick succession on the main road outside out current home, we decided it was just too dangerous to keep cats so close to all the fast moving traffic, and we were a pet free home for a few years.

I've told the story of how Linus came to live with us before, so I won’t repeat it, but now we have Lottie.  We had talked about getting another dog as a companion for Linus, but had always said that because of the extra expense of insurance and vet bills, that we just wouldn't do it.  Then I got bored and started browsing the internet for puppies.  Well, when you start looking at all those cute pictures, you just get sucked into their adorableness and are swept away on a tide of love and longing.  I found some puppies that would be ready to leave home just after Christmas which seemed perfect timing, and we arranged to go and see them.  Once you hold that sweet little bundle and get licked by her puppy tongue you’re branded and there’s nothing to do but embrace the new addition.  Linus accepted her straight away, well he would because he’s the friendliest dog in the whole wide world, and over the weeks they have really bonded.  So much so that they share dog treats, and by that I mean they chew the same “bone” even though it’s only a few inches long.

She’s been a quick learner so far, brighter than Linus I think, which I feel a little guilty about thinking, but sometimes he really can be a dumb dog.  When she was old enough and had had all her injections, we took her out for her first walk.  It was not a great success as it was throwing it down.  She was cold and wet and a little unsure of everything so hardly moved at all.  The second walk was much better for her and she actually looked like she was enjoying it.  Today we were very brave and let her off the lead for the first time.  She was in a safe environment and we were very close by the whole time, but it was rather nerve-

wracking as she’s a nippy little thing.

 

She stayed quite close to us the whole time and happily trotted after Linus.  Not once did she look like she was going to run off and explore on her own, and she happily came back to us when called.  This may have been more because she got a treat when she did as she was told; she is quite a greedy little madam.

It made me happy in my heart to see them out together, exploring the wood and playing in the leaves.

My 500 Words

I've joined a group on Facebook called My 500 Words.  The point of the group is to encourage anyone who is trying to write.  They are supportive, encouraging and all together just a nice bunch of people.  The point of the group, apart from just being there to help each other, is to challenge you to write at least 500 words every day.  Today is my day three, and here is what I wrote.

Day 3

So, here we are, day three.  Now what? I haven’t had any more thoughts about my book today.  I’ve been rather busy doing normal stuff.  I got up quite early for a Saturday morning because I had a plan and a purpose.  Hubby and I had agreed that today we would reorganise the kitchen because it just wasn’t working the way it was.  All was fine for the three of us until Rebekah, Adam and Charlie moved in on a semi-permanent basis.  The spent a few months travelling in Europe last year, but decided that they needed to be nearer to home as they felt a little isolated with Charlie and were starting to get concerned about what would happen if he got sick. As they’d given up their rented accommodation in spring last year, they needed somewhere to stay and our house was their choice.

Things are working fine, and we’ve accommodated enough of their personal belongings to make them feel at home, but we hadn’t really gottten round to making the kitchen more ergonomic. We’d had enough space for all our bits and bobs so it didn’t really matter if there was wasted room in the cupboards, but it was beginning to feel like the task of getting out dishes or pans or plastic storage containers, and then putting them tidily away, was quite onerous. 

Luckily we have a dishwasher to deal with all the extra dirty plates and pans, but emptying it and finding spaces to put things back was such a chore.  You had to move three pans just to put away the one you’d used, or lift up four dishes so that the big one fitted nicely with the all the smaller ones inside it.  Their food was spread out in three different areas, so they had to open several cupboards just get out the basics for the meal they were preparing.  Charlie’s sippy cups and non-slip bowls were never stacked neatly because they had to fit in between the group up’s crockery.  We were supposed to tackle these issues before Christmas, but we got a bit caught up with decorating three bedrooms, and ran out of time before the jolly man in the red and white suit turned up.  New year brought a nasty virus down on me which took a few weeks to recover from, and by that time we were back into the old routine and thoughts of sorting out the kitchen had all but disappeared.

Now, I don’t know about you, but plastic tubs cause stress in our house.  They are all thrown into a large drawer and you can hardly ever seem to find just the right tub needed, and if you do find the right tub, you can’t find the corresponding lid.  This was the catalyst for deciding to tackle the kitchen.  I was looking for a lid to fit onto a small round tub so that I could take a couple of brownies to work to go along with my lunch on Friday, but the lid eluded me. Hubby was helping me look and yet again expressed his exasperation at the state of the jumble of tubs and lids and how if it was up to him he’d throw them all out and start again.  His plan would be to number all containers and lids so that you could keep track of them.  Container 1 would go with lid 1 and so on. Then he suggested that we make that our Saturday goal.  Reorganise the kitchen to make it more user friendly, and do something about the plastic situation, and for once we have actually stuck to our plan and done it.  Kitchen has been overhauled and new containers have been purchased. Now if I could just have a new kitchen to go along with it all, that would be just grand.

Twelve Angry Men

When I go to the theatre, I usually go to see a show.  All singing, all dancing, all entertaining.  I rarely opt for a straight play, and even if there was no singing, I'd normally expect plenty of laughs.  That's not how anyone would describe the production of Twelve Angry Men that I have just seen at the Grand Theatre in Leeds.  So why did I choose to go and see this?

When I was a  young teenager in the 70s, the 1957 black and white film of Twelve Angry Men was on one Saturday afternoon.  I didn't remember much about the film in terms of exactly how the story unfolded, but what has always been an overriding memory was just how gripped I was by the performances of the actors, and how it held my attention, despite being of the new generation that expected everything to be in colour and be fast and furious.  Even back then it was evident that attention spans were getting shorter and popular entertainment was keeping up with this trend.  Teenagers did not care about out of date actors in black and white films, yet I have never forgotten how I felt when I watched that film, despite remembering almost nothing else about it.

When Kim was home at Christmas she mentioned that there was a touring production of the stage play and that it was going to be in Manchester.  She suggested to her granddad that she could take him to see it, as one of her client's was in it.  I mentioned that I would like to see it, so we said we would go.  As it turned out, that didn't happen and I'd pretty much forgotten about it, until Kim mentioned that she'd been to see it with Bekah, but that it had been the last night.  Thinking that I'd missed my chance I was a little disappointed, but as I was looking for things to do during my week off work this week, I found that the tour had moved to Leeds, so we quickly booked tickets.

I was a little worried that my memory of how that film had made me feel, was not accurate, or that the live actors would not produce the quality of performances that would draw me in, like Henry Fonda did in the original.  I didn't need to be worried.  It was just brilliant.  I loved every minute of it. The way it was staged, each individual characterisation, the script, which did not feel at all dated.  The time passed too quickly, I could have stayed in their world much longer.  I am so glad that I have the opportunity to go to the theatre and that my family share and enjoy this with me.

Moth Watch Update

As you may know, we decorated the moth for Christmas.  Well, today we took the decorations down, and as we removed the mini wreath, the moth fell to the floor.  Robert called me to show me what had happened.  He thought it was dead.  It was flat out on the floor with its wings open.  This was the first time we had seen the wings, and it actually looks more like a butterfly than a moth now.  Anyone?

I was quite concerned, and thought it might be a good idea if I gave it some sugar water.  Up until now, it had always been high up.  This was the first time since June that it had been in a place where we could feed it.  We mixed up some sugar water, and I spooned some of it into a puddle in front of the moth/butterfly, then left it alone while we carried on putting away the decorations.

Next time we went to check on it, it had moved along the tiles.  I was really glad that it was still alive, and gave it some more sugar water.

It showed even more signs of life by flying up to the window above the front door.  We have never seen it move (apart from when it fell down), we have just seen that it has moved from one place to another.

When we came back from shopping, it was back down on the floor, where it still is.  I have a theory that after getting sugar water when it was on the ground, it realised it might be on to a good thing, so came down for some more, which I have given it.  I'm hoping it makes it through to spring, when I think I'll try and get it outside.

Moth

We have a moth in our house.  This moth has been in our house since about June or July.  It was perched in the hallway, near the ceiling by the dining room door.  It wasn't moving.  We decided it was dead, and each of us kept meaning to remove it from its perch, but none of us got round to it,

About six to eight weeks ago, I was walking towards the front door when I noticed that the moth had moved.  It was no longer by the dining room door, it was above the window of the vestibule door.  I was amazed. I had been sure this moth was dead because it hadn't moved an inch in months, and now there it was, not moving, but in a different place.

Last week, we had the downstairs carpets cleaned.  This seemed to unnerve the moth, which by this time we were calling our pet moth.  He moved from above the window to the side of the window.  We think it might have been because of the steam rising from the machine the men were using.  I thought it might finally decide to leave us.

A few days ago it had gone from the side of the window, and I couldn't see it anywhere.  Had it finally left us?  No, it had moved to the ceiling near the front door.  I have no idea if this is normal moth behaviour, but we're quite enjoying moth watch in our house.