Monday 1st December.
Well, less than a month to go. This Sunday, I suppose,
we’ll be putting out the decorations and the tree, being the second Sunday in
Advent. That is when we always used to get the decorations out at home. Dad is
doing his too but not until after next weekend as he’ll be with us on that Sunday
because he is going to see Deacon Blue at the City Hall on the following Monday
night. He is going to leave his house decorated, as when he went away for
Christmas once before, with me in charge, he didn’t bother. So I bent his ear
about it. I have promised to take anything down carefully and if he leaves the
boxes in the garage, I will pack it all away carefully.
At work this morning we had a revelation. The missing
papers have finally turned up. They were underneath some French Faculty papers
in a French Faculty box file in Felice’s office. I knew I hadn’t had anything
to do with their disappearance but I got the impression out Gallic friend was
hinting I may have tidied them up as part of my OCD.
This is such good news I was even prepared to overlook
the imagined slight!
Our work party is scheduled for a week on Wednesday and I
am having second thoughts already. I mean do I really want to go to a disco and
buffet? I think not. I much preferred the previous years’ events where we went
to a show at the theatre and then those who wished went on clubbing afterwards.
It seems we are being held hostages to fortune this way. I suppose the thought
of seeing a Soap ‘Star’ in the pantomime or watching ’Anything Goes’ was a bit
of a Hobson’s choice for everybody really. In fact I think the current proposal
is actually worse.
The City Hall’s Christmas Concert with the Black Dyke
Mills band cut no mustard either. Nor did the Remember When at Christmas
either. So we have settled on something even worse.
Trevor arrived with his Mum in tow tonight for his
penultimate lesson with Laura. We had been brought a present. Trevor’s Mum was
surprised that we hadn’t got any decs up yet. They have had theirs up since
mid-November! Well, I had to bite my tongue. I almost said, “We aren’t that
Chavvy!” Phew. We put the gift wrapped box on the small table where we locate
the Christmas Tree and assured her it would be there by next Monday.
Currently all our pressies are in a pile of carrier bags
in the second bedroom, so we need to get the tree up on Sunday or there’ll be
no room for Dad and Louisa in that room! We don’t actually have a tree yet.
Steve is bringing us a real one on Thursday.
Tuesday 2nd December.
A full day at Uni and already some of the undergrads are
in party mood. The semester ends two weeks on Friday but I guess after the
weekend of the 12th it will begin to resemble the Marie Celeste
around campus again. It did last year.
I got an invitation to a Christmas Party from one of my
pastoral group today, which was nice of her. It is for Friday 12th.
I am not sure if we will turn up but we’ll see. It is their ‘house’ having the
do, which can spell chaos. I have been there and done that and had to fetch the
emergency glazier to prove it. Some drongo at one of our parties in Cambridge
fell through our kitchen window! Can you believe it? The window glass was
sound, as far as we were aware. He said he’d just leant against the glass and
the next thing he knew he was in the back yard on a heap of bin bags with
splinters of glass all around him. This
was one of the first manifestations of my DIY prowess, as Rick was several
bottles ahead of me already, he was in no fit state to do anything about it.
I recalled there was some ply wood in the garden shed, so
I measured up the window gap and in my party frock and high heels, went into
the shed, measured up the wood and cut it out. I was all set to whack it into
the frame with a hammer and some long panel pins when I was relieved of the
task by a couple of Rick’s friends who weren’t as pissed as he. The two guys
found it amusing as hell, that I had been busy with an electric jigsaw at two
in the morning dressed up the nines! But the wood fitted perfectly into the gap
and the two of them were able to fasten it in place. They even spent a few
minutes removing the shards of glass from the frame before they put the wood
into place and then picked up the glass from outside too. I gave them a kiss
each as their reward. (One of the cheeky buggers fondled my bum in the
process!)
I have always been a handy little soul. I was taught to
sew (by Mum & Gran) when I was little and Dad showed me how to use some of
his wood work stuff. I wanted to make a Noah’s Ark for church when I was about
6 or 7. He tried to fob me off with carving the animals out of balsa wood but I
was having none of it! I found plans for a toy ark in the local toyshop and I
saved up to buy what I needed, Mum matched my money, and when I had got the
stuff together Dad and I built an ark which looked like all the biblical pictures
of one. I painted it bright blue with a green deck and roof and red cabin. I
even put a black plimsoll line around the bottom. I was really proud of that
silly little boat.
I eventually made some animals but I used Dad’s bench top
jig saw and they were just flat sided ones. There never were giraffes on my ark
as I had an accident with their necks! They ended up as donkeys instead. It is
ages since I have even thought about this. I assume it has long been washed up
on the church equivalent of Mount Ararat. LOL
Felice and I spent a full day of uninterrupted work on
the cache today. This feels like the first time we’ve done so for ages. It was
good to get stuck in and work together. We finished the day with a warm
satisfied glow each and a feeling of a job going well.
Olivia was a much happier bunny tonight too. She is
looking forward to the Christmas hols and they are getting an enormous amount
of time off. They break up on the 18th and don’t go back until the 6th
of January. Phew. That’s nearly as long as we get.
Wednesday 3rd December
I was almost run over by a car this morning as I walked
Callie! We had done the long walk through Hill Top Woods and then onto Lumb
Lane. I stopped at the bench by the grit bin, like I often do, to look at the
twinkling lights of the city away to the right shimmering in the distance. When
this drongo came whizzing down the lane and almost missed the corner. He drove
along the grass by the seat and narrowly missed that too. If I had been
standing where I was when I heard it approach I would have needed to jump out
of its way! I have no idea why he was so careless, the road wasn’t icy or
anything. It wasn’t a local plate on the van though and at that point Lumb Lane
does turn through 90 degrees with no chevron markers to illustrate how sharp a
bend it is.
The rest of the day was singularly lacking in near death
experiences, thank goodness. Not that I wanted any, you understand. We did a
lot more work together this morning and this arvo I was back putting the old
paper files onto the computer system once more.
We have to have our Secret Santa gifts ready for next
Wednesday, apparently. I have a male to buy for. I have already bought a boxed
miniature of Glenfiddich Malt Whisky with two glasses etched with the
Glenfiddich logo on them. I think that should be a suitable gift for a man. I
bought Dad something similar years ago and he still uses the glasses for his
whisky today. That was Laphroaig Whisky, though, which is one of his favourites.
I find it way too peaty for my taste. It also came with four glasses rather
than two.
Christopher came down to ARR mid-afternoon and handed me
a Christmas card, a box of his Mum’s mince pies and an invitation to a New
Year’s party they are having. I think he was disappointed when I told him we
were house sitting for Dad over the holidays. I don’t think he is still holding
a candle for me. He would be a bloody fool if he is. I kissed him on the cheek
and he did blush really deep red, though.
It was just Bobbi tonight, our student for Laura, so I am
getting my head round an embroidery style from Japan called Yubinuki. I think
it is a term for a kind of thimble with geometric patterns on them, in silk
thread. I call them thimbles but they look more like rings. I have been
watching a couple of tutorial videos and have ordered a book from a lady who
teaches the technique in Japan. I have a feeling the book will be all in
Japanese. I may need a swift visit to the language faculty to find someone to
help translate it. The tutorial shows you how to go from a set of raw materials
to the complete finished item. Tonight I had a go at making the inner part of
the ring, with card, wadding and cloth.
My third one looks about the best of the bunch. It isn’t
fiddly it is just awkward. The stitching looks to be tiny. Working out the
stitch count for each one is going to be a challenge. You have to decide which finger the thimble
will fit and then it becomes bespoke for that finger. They rest between the
first and second joint of the finger (looking from the finger tip). I think I
will be loath to use on as a thimble when it is finished!
Thursday December 4th.
Still felt nervous this morning about the lecture, but
once again I was just borrowing trouble. It went really well, I had masses of
questions at the end of the session, which was unusual. Normally there is just
a handful but I must have had over a dozen today. I wonder if they’d put up to
it? Thinking that way leads to madness.
We had lunch in Lokanta as a mini-celebration. They are
all over until next year. Rah rah rah! I had the special lunch which is always
amazing.
Loll and I had a long talk about her car and we have
decided it is a bit of a pointless item down here. When we go up to Dad’s to
house sit, she is going to drive it back up to Cumbria and leave it at her Mum
and Dad’s. That way it can be kept in their garage and avoid the nasty weather.
It will still be there if and when she needs it and that may be required next
summer after she graduates. That is a hurdle to cross nearer the time. She hasn’t
got anything sorted yet but she has sent off around twenty applications to
firms in Sheffield and within a 20 mile radius, so we’ll have to see what
happens. Most are jobs involving maths in some way or another. She has even
been talking about doing a PGCE and going into teaching! Arrrggghhhh! I have
spoken to Mum about this (on the phone) and she is prepared to do her best to
put her off the idea.
Work at XXX & Y continues much as before. Mrs Briggs
is surprised at the lack of Christmas events we have planned but she didn’t
know about Dad’s house sitting. I invited her and her significant other to come
up after New Year if she wanted but she is having a fortnight of avoiding
winter in the Canary Islands! That sounds like a good plan. I imagine next
Christmas will be at Dad’s again but with their new daughter having her first
Christmas; that is something I don’t want to miss. I would even bet he invites
Phil, Jane and Family to stay too. It would be the sort of thing he does.
Jenny-Leigh and Sally came for their lessons as per
usual. I can’t see why J-L needs to come for extra classes at all. I said the
same thing about Olivia too. Maybe they are being less open with their teachers
than they are with me. But each of them is coping easily with the stuff we’ve
been doing (all provided courtesy of Mum and her old teaching resources). I
will have a chat with J-L’s Mum in the New Year and see if there is an underlying
reason why she thinks she needs extra help. I guess it could be a clash of personalities
having a negative effect on them both. When I think back to my school days
there was one teacher who seemed to go out of her way to be unpleasant towards
me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I knew. It appeared my only crime
was being the daughter of the Head of English. This is probably the reason why
I hated Physics even though I loved Chemistry.
There was just a little bit of rain for Callie’s stroll
tonight, so we did the toddle round the back field instead of a long walk
through the woods. We surprised a fox! Well, I did. Luckily Callie didn’t see
it, when I caught it in the torch beam. It scurried off up the hill and I lost
it pretty quickly. As we continued round the field you could smell where it had
been though, that pungent, acrid fox aroma was quite noticeable.
Once again our bodies have synchronised themselves to
reline our endometria at the same time. It is getting quite weirdly funny. I
have read about it happening in Convents and other places where women
congregate together, but two women living with each other? Should I contact
someone at Uni to do a study? LOL
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