July Month 6

This is a very exciting month because, with the lockdown ease….. I’ve done things! I’m still a long way off 70, and I’m sure I’ll need to revise the original list, but a window of opportunity came and I peered through. As you can see, this covid life is making me quite poetical.

I’ll start with the negatives to get them out of the way:

Number 63 – Learn a poem I’m no further than one verse into the poem I’m learning by heart, the good news being that I do remember that verse and can recite it to order. I was going to say without thinking, but I expect that that’s not a good thing to do if I’m going to start to appreciate poetry. Message to self – ‘think about what the poet is saying‘.

Number 54 – Listen to Bien Dire every two months. Listening to the recordings of the French magazine Bien Dire is the second word of that in English. It’s dire and I’m not learning anything. Not that I’m heading off to France any time soon, but if I ever do, I want to be able to chat away to the locals. Or ask the way to the Post Office. Or something between the two. When clearing out a cupboard I discovered the so far unused Michel Thomas French Course CDs. It is now a new challenge to complete the course.

Enough of the negatives. Here are the NEW things and I’ll finish with the usual ongoing achievements.

Number 44 – Ride a bicycle along a cycle path. No cycle path, but after many years, I borrowed a bike and rode it. There is proof. I didn’t ride it far, but I didn’t fall off.

Number 46 – Walk up local mountains. I’ve started with Table Mountain. The least demanding. But oh, how lovely it was. I wrote about the walk from memory last month and I was pleased to see how much I’d remembered. The longhorn cows were there complete with long horns, as placid as ever. Being on top was air punching. ‘Where I used to live’ and ‘Where Pavel grows vegetables’ were clearly visible . Only 4 more peaks to go. All more of a challenge than this one.

Number 66 – Sort photos. The photos had been stored in a large box for years. When I’d decided how to tackle them, it really wasn’t that bad and I would highly recommend biting the bullet and doing this if you have a similar stash of photos. Instead of trying to put them into albums, I bought Ikea boxes (recommended by the lovely Janice), brown envelopes, and sorted according to topic. I threw some away, and am left with three (small) boxes. One for trips and holidays, one for family and friends, and one for the decades of my life. Yes, there is overlap but it’s neat and tidy. I still have albums, but now I have albums and boxes and I pretty much know where everything is. The envelope ‘filing’ makes it easy to access photos and the space taken up is much reduced. Success.

The usual:

Number 35 – a new composer. Rachmaninov. Hmmm. I was lent a book which after the first chapter turned out to be a bit dry and dense. I didn’t finish it. A couple of YouTube documentaries didn’t inspire me either. I liked a lot of the music. I was familiar with Piano Concerto No 2 – the theme from Brief Encounter, and Piano Concerto No 3 from the movie Shine. New pieces I really liked were the Preludes in G minor and C# major . But Rachmaninov himself? Not as interesting as the others I’ve been learning about. He seems to have been generally more stable, middle class and financially secure – with requited love! Although leaving your homeland and settling in a new country would not have been easy.

The one thing everyone but me seemed to know about him was that he had enormous hands and so could stretch huge intervals on the keyboard!

Number 62 – cooking new recipes. This month is was za’atar chicken with lemon, and yogurt & tahini sauce. Just typing that makes my mouth water. Do try it. Unless you’re vegetarian/vegan, but even then, make yogurt and tahini sauce and dribble it over everything. You won’t regret it.

Then I made chocolate and hazelnut brown butter financiers. And yes, we all think financiers work in the City don’t we? Well, not only! The recipe called for 5 egg whites so I also make a huge jug of custard. Rhubarb and custard was a daily event for a while. A dish from times gone by, but none the worse for it.

Number 3 – Write proper letters. This month to a sister-in-law in the US who should have been visiting in September. Skype calls are good but we’ll miss the face to face.

Number 4 – Paint a picture. That’s coming along in a rubbish sort of way! I had the idea of a lockdown inspired piece of art. It’s definitely not the one I’ll consider as completing Number 4, but I thought you might like to see the blue sky of lockdown and one of the swallows that arrived at the start of summer!

Number 10 – Monthly donation this month to South Powys Parkinson’s Group.

Number 43 – CD from Matt at Diverse Vinyl. I’m definitely getting, and enjoying, something different every month. This one appealed to the Bruce Springsteen inside me! It’s by Country Westerns but doesn’t appear to have a title.

Number 63 – Plant a herb garden. It’s going well but I’m rather grumpy about the fact that the parsley Pavel is growing on his allotment is far more successful that the parsley I’m growing on his allotment…

Number 68 – Book club books. Only one this month so I’m let off the possibility of reading something I don’t like! The one was Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. It’s the stories of twelve women whose lives overlap in very different ways at different times. It’s clever and thought provoking. I’m giving it 5 stars. The literary world gave it the Booker Prize!

With only one book club book there was time for more. I went for a bit of a medical/healthcare ride and read With The End In Mind by Kathryn Mannix about end of life care, and Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby about the patients he met and treated as a cardiac surgeon. I would recommend the first but I’m not so sure about the second. It’s interesting but quite technical and consequently hard going. I wasn’t gripped. Now I’m reading Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a fictional take on Hillary Clinton’s life if she hadn’t married Bill. So far so good.

See you next month.