My New Year started off
with a very special treat – a visit to the ballet in London, as
part of my brother's 60th birthday present to me. I had been given
the option of any number of cultural activities that the Great
Metropolis could offer, but settled on Swan Lake as I have never, in
all my 60 years, been to a live ballet performance and Swan Lake has
always been my favourite. I decided to travel from Cheltenham on the
Megabus service and couldn't believe that a return ticket was just
£5.50! (Out of interest, I worked out that I could travel by Megabus
from Cheltenham to Aberdeen for £25.50 although I would have to go
via London and it would probably take two days!)
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| Details from the tapestry |
I arrived at Victoria
Coach Station at about 12.30pm on Thursday, 8th January
and was not due to meet up with my brother until about 3.30pm so I
had planned to go to a small gallery, The Fleming Collection, in
Berkeley Street where there was the largest collection of Scottish
Art in private hands. It was also displaying a tapestry that had been
woven in Scotland and was a copy of a painting of a wintry scene with
a lone shepherdess trudging through the snow to feed her flock, but
all the shades had been achieved using various natural British wools.
I had heard about this tapestry on Radio 4's On Your Farm programme
and was intrigued to see it – it was definitely worth the visit and
usefully occupied a couple of hours until I could meet my brother.
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| The finished tapestry |
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| 'Cutty Sark' at Greenwich |
On the Friday, we took
the bus to Greenwich Park and walked down the hill, past the
Observatory, to what used to be the Naval College, but is now the
Trinity College of Music, to listen to a lunchtime recital in the
amazing baroque chapel, and from there we walked to Cutty Sark and
around Greenwich Market before walking back up through the Park and
catching the bus home. I still can't get over the flocks of parakeets
that inhabit the London parks and screech loudly in the trees as you
walk by and, also the squirrels that come up and virtually mug you
for titbits – brazen creatures. I even caught site of a fox, from
the top of the bus, as it wandered quite unconcernedly through a
clump of trees on the common.
Saturday was a quieter
day but, in the evening, we went to Kings Cross to see a performance
that was part of the London Mime Festival. It involved three guys who
explored heterosexual male friendships through a mixture of mime and
acrobatics – it was stunningly good and I was awestruck by their
talent.
Finally, Sunday arrived
and we had an early lunch and then made our way to The Coliseum near
Charing Cross to see the National Ballet's Swan Lake. It was
everything I'd hoped it would be – we were in the Dress Circle so
had a really good view of the stage. It was very much a classical
performance, of which I was glad, as I don't think I would have
enjoyed the recent all-male production in quite the same way. I
hadn't realised that there were several possible endings to the
story, but they went with the more traditional one where the lovers
fling themselves into the lake and are together for ever in the
spirit world.
I headed back to
Cheltenham on the Monday afternoon but not before visiting Tate
Britain and seeing the Turner exhibition which was jaw-droppingly
wonderful! I think perhaps my cultural life has been a little lacking
in recent years but this incredible weekend should go some way to
redressing the balance. I really must get out more!
The next excitement
came a week later when I started the move back to Somerset. I am now
based just south of Shepton Mallet and renting a small conversion
(which I think I shall refer to as 'The Byre', although it has no
separate address) from a friend of mine. She has never got into the
internet, so it has taken me a while to get it all sorted out, but I
am now back online after a month of very little connection. I hadn't
realised just how much I relied on it to keep in touch with people,
do shopping and banking, etc.
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| My new home |
So far I have brought
two car loads of stuff from my Mum's and there is still plenty more
to keep me going back and forth for some time yet! Luckily, most of
my possessions have been stored at this same friend's for the last
five years so I only had to move things across the yard – the
easiest house move I have ever done! It has taken a while to find
homes for everything that I want, but it is gradually coming
together.
The best thing was the
arrival of my Cornish bed! My WWOOF hosts and friends down near
Launceston were replacing the iron-framed bed that I normally sleep
in, with a modern divan, and asked if I would be interested in giving
it a new home. I always sleep pretty soundly in this bed so knew that
the mattress was comfortable and I longed to have a double bed as I
don't sleep very well at all in a single bed, not having had one of
my own since I was in my teens, so I jumped at the opportunity. On
the second Friday after I'd moved in a man and van arrived with my
bed on board and I wasted no time at all in assembling it and making
it up. Now, anyone who has seen me over the last year will know that
I am usually to be seen travelling with a large bag of assorted
knitting wool that I have been slowly converting into a crochet
blanket for just such a bed, so I sat up on that Friday evening until
I had finished sewing it all together and then put it on the bed.
What with that and the 100% cotton bedlinen that my son had bought
for me for Christmas, I had the most wonderful night's sleep, and
have continued to have ever since. Brilliant!
After nearly five years
of living in other people's homes it has been quite exciting to get
my own space again and I have discovered several things amongst my
possessions that I'd completely forgotten about, which has been
lovely. I have been quite tough on myself though and created a
charity shop box of things that I don't like or will never use again
for one reason or another.
After a couple of weeks
of moving stuff around and unpacking, I decided to look at the
possibility of creating a vegetable plot somewhere, so I am now in
the process of building a raised bed out of railway sleepers. There
was already a bed in this area but it hasn't been used for some years
and was full of nettles, so I started off by digging out all of the
weeds. The bed is only about ten inches deep as it sits on top of the
concrete of the farm yard, but at least the nettle roots can't go
down too deep! I then moved the soil out of the way while I put in a
thick layer of well-rotted horse manure, and then put the soil back
on top – my shoulders objected to that exercise but I have only
been doing a couple of hours a day so that I don't seize up through
inactivity (a definite possibility at this time of the year). I now
have to construct some rabbit-proof fencing and then I should be more
or less ready for when Spring arrives in earnest.
At the end of February
I start my WWOOFing/farm sitting year and will be quite busy then
until the end of May, although I hope to have a couple of short
stays at 'home' between fixtures, so that I can actually plant some
seeds of my own.
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| The Cornish bed complete with crochet blanket! |
