Sunday Sevens #7

This Sunday Sevens has been rather hard to compile. I only seem to be taking pictures of plants and food recently. Oh. I need to find some excitement in my life!

During breakfast on Sunday, (I have mine snuggled up in bed while listening to Classic FM) David called me downstairs. He had spied a new visitor to the yarden. It only stayed briefly and I didn’t have time to take a picture but I think it was a male Black Cap. He probably just used the yarden as a pit stop on his way to better feeding grounds, much like the Chiffchaff earlier in the year.

blackcap_1a_6996063938

By Tony Hisgett via Wikimedia Commons

David cooked Sunday dinner. He used a curry base and added spices to make a very tasty Rogan Josh.

We attended a family funeral mid week. Funeral services always make me think of this Emily Dickinson poem

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

After reading Kate Riordan’s second novel, I bought her first novel the Girl in the Photograph. It was only £2.75, second hand from Ebay. It’s another one of those novels that has parallel narratives.

While passing the University of Liverpool, I caught sight of this very striking statue in the quadrangle!

For Saturday’s meal I cooked a vegetarian bean chilli. However, I made a few adjustments to the original recipe, which you can find here. I just used what I could find in the store cupboard. I swapped borlotti beans for pinto, used red lentils instead of puy and left out the marmite altogether! It made for an inexpensive yet healthy meal, even if it was rather hot with two teaspoons of chilli powder! I thought it was very tasty!

For the final picture, in the past few weeks I have been monitoring a strange plant that has been growing in the yarden. At first I didn’t know what it was but now that it’s budded, I remember planting snake’s head fritillary bulbs a year ago.

Have you had any strange looking plants grow in your garden? Cooked any yummy meals recently?

Christine x

Sunday Sevens was devised by Threads and bobbins.

A Date is Set and Some Musings….

The date for moving into the new house has been set…  I made an executive decision (as David and I were humming and aahhing for hours!), to name the date for moving in to be the 27th December 2013! I did not want the upheaval over Christmas, so I have chosen a date afterwards.

Other news: I am overjoyed to have successfully booked seats for the forthcoming ‘Twelfth Night‘ at the new Liverpool Everyman Theatre!

http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/show/Twelfth_Night/1031.aspx

I managed to even get front row stalls! I was amazed as I thought that people in the city would have been snapping up the seats readily! I can’t wait to see the new theatre and this production of my favourite Shakespeare play!

Work wise: I did not find myself unemployed for long. Well it was exactly two days! I got a call not long after finishing work at the Royal Hospital from the agency informing me that my student from last year had asked if I could go back to work with her and help with her studies. So that is what I have been doing these past few weeks. There are only two weeks remaining of the University term and then I am looking forward to a nice long holiday over Christmas. A rest is much needed!

Animal matters: There have been many wild birds visiting the garden feeders as the autumn temperatures start to plummet and the dark nights draw in. There have been the usual numerous Goldfinches, Starlings and Pigeons and they have been joined by two Blue Tits and even a shy Robin! But there has been too much activity for the poor Robin to forage at his own pace! I even thought I had seen a brief visitation of the Dunnock, but I could have been mistaken!

My Border Collie Riley has been worrying me a bit today. He has seemed very quiet, has not eaten his evening meal and looks so sad. 😦 I hope he is not sickening for something? He still goes on his walks and wants to play, he just seems under the weather today. Let’s just hope it is just a phase and he is back to his wild, energetic self tomorrow!

Well I Didn’t Expect that to Happen!

About two weeks ago, I  got an email from Randstad about an Access to Work booking for a client who worked in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. The work entailed reading and replying to emails, taking minutes in meetings and general admin duties for their client. I was umming and ahhing about the post for about a week before I sent in my CV. ‘What the hell’ I thought, ‘it’d be better than going on the dole!’

Then last Wednesday I had a meeting with the lady in the Trust whom the work was to be for and she seemed nice. You can imagine my surprise when about two hours after the ‘interview’ I got an email saying I was successful and the lady wanted me to start the following week!

I have now had my first three days of work in the Royal and I have thoroughly enjoyed it! It has been diverse, different from the work at the University, but ultimately I still get to meet and work with lots of people. I have been working from 8.30 in the morning ’til 2.30 of an afternoon, so beating the rush hour! I hope that the work continues to keep me occupied over the summer!

I am now sitting back and relaxing, enjoying a nice glass of pinot grigio and looking forward to a restful day tomorrow, then wallpapering in the dining room over the weekend, in the final push to get the house ‘ship shape’ before we move in!

During dinner time this evening I noticed six Goldfinch adults at the sunflower heart feeders in the yard and amongst them there was a baby Goldfinch! My first of 2013! I have not been seeing many Goldfinches lately so maybe now they have weaned their young they are starting to show them the feeders? See below for a video of the newcomer!

 

The Jailer.

I was just sitting enjoying my cappuccino from Costa in a very quiet university study area as most students have all gone home for the summer. I was recharging my batteries before the second dentistry exam I was to invigilate in the afternoon. (I had a three hour one in the morning.)

When breaking the quietness of the room came the jangle of keys as someone walked past. It brought to my mind the poem by Sylvia Plath, the Jailer. Though not my favourite of hers, I thought I would post it here for you all to read.

Christine x

The Jailer by Sylvia Plath.

My night sweats grease his breakfast plate.
The same placard of blue fog is wheeled into position
With the same trees and headstones.
Is that all he can come up with,
The rattler of keys?

I have been drugged and raped.
Seven hours knocked out of my right mind
Into a black sack
Where I relax, foetus or cat,
Lever of his wet dreams.

Something is gone.
My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelin
Drops me from a terrible altitude.
Carapace smashed,
I spread to the beaks of birds.

O little gimlets—
What holes this papery day is already full of!
He his been burning me with cigarettes,
Pretending I am a negress with pink paws.
I am myself. That is not enough.

The fever trickles and stiffens in my hair.
My ribs show. What have I eaten?
Lies and smiles.
Surely the sky is not that colour,
Surely the grass should be rippling.

All day, gluing my church of burnt matchsticks,
I dream of someone else entirely.
And he, for this subversion,
Hurts me, he
With his armor of fakery,

His high cold masks of amnesia.
How did I get here?
Indeterminate criminal,
I die with variety—
Hung, starved, burned, hooked.

I imagine him
Impotent as distant thunder,
In whose shadow I have eaten my ghost ration.
I wish him dead or away.
That, it seems, is the impossibility.

That being free. What would the dark
Do without fevers to eat?
What would the light
Do without eyes to knife, what would he
Do, do, do without me?