Life, recorded — An Elegant Sufficiency

Busy days here, early starts and evenings blobbed out in front of the TV. Not much to blog about. Or?

I posted my frustration with my overlocker on Facebook, knowing that I’d get an immediate chorus of support and sympathy. I was merely trying to take up the hems of a pair of culottes I’d bought back in Nashville last November and my haste back then in trying out fusible hemming web had come back to haunt me. An expensive pair of trousers clearly demanded better than that and so I got out my overlocker as the first stage of doing the job properly. But I’d forgotten the frustration of getting it properly threaded and changing from white to black thread was no picnic. I finally got it running properly when we got back from the opera on Saturday night, knowing that I’d find it hard to sleep until I’d solved the problem.

I knew that we’d not have time on Sunday morning to do such things, because we were heading into London to meet Tra for lunch at Orrery. How lovely it was to see her and to hear all the news from Hong Kong.

Her fleeting visit fitted in perfectly with my plans for a play date with friends, so my hero and I indulged ourselves with an overnight stay and went our separate ways on Monday morning.

Whilst he headed off home, I caught a bus to meet up for what turned out to be a day sitting around various tables, with cups or glasses in hand depending on the time. How good was that!?

One or more of us might have even played on a seesaw. What fun! Of course, we were interacting with the art installations, weren’t we?

Also in our diaries this week was a family funeral - we went with Bettine to say goodbye to her niece Jenny in the new crematorium in Cheltenham, feeling strangely discombobulated by a member of staff pressing a card and a pen into our hands as we arrived with a request for us to write our memories on it. It was a strangely pressing request - or was it an instruction? - and we found it a difficult one to fulfil. Of course, we did our best in trying to sum up a lifetime of thoughts, feelings and memories on six lines, given the circumstances. I summoned up my best handwriting and with just one correction (even though I’m a great speller, I needed two goes at “niece”) we fulfilled our obligation. Definitely one of those times when the more sincere the emotion, the less likely it was to be conveyed on that little card.

I’m glad to report success on the overlocker front, though haven’t yet completed the whole task of sewing up the hems!

Instead, I’ve been expressing my frustration with the quality control of this 6” craft paper, receiving an immediate response from the company and an offer to replace it. My grumpiness was compounded by the reminder scribbled in my diary “Great Western Railway - cheque due”, in respect of the refund for my cancelled train last December. Still awaiting completion of that small dispute, I was about to email their customer services for the fourth (or is it the fifth time?) when the post arrived and hooray! My cheque!

The cheque hasn’t even found its way to my account yet but I’ve already spent half. Watching TV the other night, I admired a top that someone was wearing and in the space of fifteen minutes had identified it, tracked it down to the John Lewis website and discovered it reduced to half price in my size as well. Less that 24 hours later I was wearing it - and will enjoy wearing the other half price purchase I couldn’t resist that was on the next page too!

Yesterday was the first of my judging commitments this year, when I joined a few colleagues over the bridge in Gwent where they were holding the preliminary round of the 2019 Royal Welsh cooperative competition on the theme of “Bees and Trees”. It wasn’t an easy theme to interpret and with fourteen beautiful entries to work my way through, I can’t say it was easy to judge either. But I made my decisions and as always, enjoyed seeing the creativity and technical skills on show.