More on candle light

 I posted a few days ago about candlelight. 

I really love candlelight, but (especially living in the garret of this tall Victorian house, from which escape in the event of fire would be difficult to say the least) I am uber-safety-conscious.

It might be fair to say I have something of a disaster mentality.  In our supermarkets here there’s often a security sign at checkouts saying “This till is alarmed”, and I think I must have been born with an invisible notice on me saying something similar.  As a consequence, though daily life is a matter of constant apprehension, I am prepared for almost any event.

Just now, apparently in slow-mo, we are having our kitchen ripped out and replaced.  So we are several weeks with no stove to cook on or in – but, no problem!  We have provided ourselves with a mini-oven and free-range electric hotplate, plus the top of the woodstove will take a casserole.   We converted our back sitting room to a temporary kitchen and continued in there while Joe ripped out units and gouged holes out of the walls for new cable tracks.  Then all went quiet while he went off to fix our Rosie’s roof while the weather was dry.  Yesterday he was back with Nick, who will seal off the gas and remove the pipes that fed the hob and grill (we have solar panels now so it makes sense to go to all electric), take out the sink ready for the new unit with a butler sink Martin is making for us out of reclaimed floor joists (the unit not the sink), and re-route the cabling for where the cooker will stand.  This involved turning off the water and draining down the system.  No problem!  Not knowing which day he would come, every day we have been ready with a huge 1.5 ltr pump thermos (which we happen to have) full of boiling water, and a bucket of cold water standing by.  We also have an enamel kettle that we can heat on the woodstove in the evening to fill the thermos ready for the morning.  For a while Nick also had to turn off the electricity.  No problem!  It was daylight so we didn’t need the many candles we always have, but we wanted a cup of tea so I went out to the shed and fetched the storm kettle, which we can run on the back doorstep on the shredded cardboard packaging we keep in a basket by the hearth to fuel the luxury fire when we sit down for a teabreak.

So well-defended are we against Hard Times (which we have seen aplenty) that Normal Times look to us like the treacherous surface of a sucking bog whereon all appears grassy and safe to walk on until you try to cross it.  Thus we like to be prepared for all eventualities.  As Lilian Beckwith expressed it in her wonderful series of stories about her life in the Outer Hebrides, “A Rope – In Case”.

So in my love of candle-light, I want not just candles in general, but candles that won’t fall over by themselves, ignite a tea-towel that accidentally fell on them, or get knocked over by the cat that jumped on the table when I wasn’t looking.  When my mother was a child, the farmhouse being in those days lit by oil lamps, her sister managed to start a house fire by tugging out from under the oil lamp the piece of paper she wanted that it was standing on, not anticipating that this would cause the lamp to tip.  I am wary of naked flames.

So I like my candles encased in glass, preferably with a lid, preferably hanging not standing.  I take note of the comment Buzz left on my previous post about candles, recalling an occasion in her childhood when she had a candle in a jam jar and the heat from the flame caused a demi-lune section to shear off and fly across the room.  Lawks!  So though I do occasionally have candles in (large) jam jars, that’s just out in the porch or preferably right outside on the step as a “welcome” light.

In the bedroom I (briefly) had this beautiful lantern.  It is a fair-trade item made by a firm using recycled  and Earth-friendly materials,  When I got it, I explained that I would be hanging it from a hook, and the shop lady and I spend some time peering into its chimney to be sure the metal fastenings that hooked the ring to the lid were sturdy.   Happily the glass did not break when the heat from the candle melted the solder that was, surprisingly, the only thing adhering the lid to the chimney and the whole thing fell down with an impressive crash.

Then I discovered the UCO candle-lantern (cheapest in the UK are on e-Bay) and since then, friends, I have never looked back.  Safe, effective, compact, it folds down for travelling, the candles burn 9 hours and they make a beeswax alternative to the standard paraffin ones.

Ta-da!

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365 day 17 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

A beautiful, handmade statue of Our Lady of Grace.  Went to Barnados.

Lemon curd

Normally we stick to eating wholemeal bread because it’s good for us as well as delicious, but white bread with lemon curd is so scrumptious, like cake really.  The only difficult thing was having the patience to wait for the lemon curd to cool down!

Recently – around Christmas time I think, when we’d been having a bigger variety of food than usual, I began to feel horrified about the quantities of packaging generated, and I came into the new year determined to do something about it.  Spurred on by reading Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man, which I’m halfway through and really enjoying, I’ve been reviewing what we buy and what it comes wrapped in.

We try to favour local shops or locally sourced produce – we do buy from Sainsburys and the Co-op though they are large chains, because they include a lot of organic, free-range, responsibly sourced, fairly traded products, and they make their baked goods and cereals from British grain, keeping the food miles down to some extent.  Even with this good track record, practicality means more rather than less packaging in their stores, besides which we like to buy from small family businesses when that option doesn’t bankrupt us (it’s often, though not always, much more expensive).  We keep our costs down by the type of goods we buy rather than by shopping with giants.  Beans will always be cheaper than cheese or meat, by a long way when the animal protein food is bought mindful of the care to the animal while it was alive.

We separate and recycle our garbage conscientiously, but even recycling is an industrial process costly to the Earth, and no packaging is better than recycled packaging.  So we’ve reviewed our buying patterns, and this is getting easier all the time to do; of the five of us living here, three (soon four) work freelance, and that gives us the space in our time budget to dot about here and there making purchases at the little shops scattered widely round the sprawl of Hastings and St Leonards.

We have changed to getting our bread and vegetables from local bakers and greengrocers – the bread costs half as much again or even double in price if we do that, but not the fruit and veg.  There we can either put the food unwrapped straight in our basket, or have it packed in a paper bag.  As the paper bags are excellent kindling, either is fine.

Dairy produce is not a problem because we shouldn’t eat it – it makes us all ill.  We slipped back into eating it at the end of last year and coughed and sneezed and snotted along until we faced the reality that we really had to knock this off.  I am no fan of margarine though, and will continue to opt for butter, but I care where the butter comes from – how the cows are treated, when and how their calves are slaughtered, if they are allowed to run with their mothers etc – so sourcing that is a bit of a headache.  I do like meat, and have come cautiously to the view that eating meat means giving an animal life as well as death, but I am also aware of the role meat plays in the big killers – cancer, diabetes, heart disease as well as CJD and various other grim illnesses.  And I don’t live easy with the notion that some creature’s whole life was brought to an end for me to eat this one meal gone in minutes.  Not to mention the huge amounts of water used in animal husbandry, and the 35-1 ratio of grain to meat in every pound of animal flesh eaten (grain that was 20% protein anyway).   So I have long stretches of eating vegan, and admire it as a way of life.  But I find a little animal-sourced food helpful to my physical energy and wellbeing.  Ideally I’d go for probiotic plain yoghourt, eggs, a little fish, and butter.  The yoghourt presents problems for packaging and does gunge up my system so I’ll have that only rarely.  The fish is easy because we live right by the sea, and I can take a plastic box to the shop instead of getting it wrapped in plastic bags.  The butter – ideally I’d like to find a smallholder with goats and cows and buy the butter of either animal straight from her: I’ll go to the farmer’s market and ask.  The eggs – we have a brilliant solution!  Next door to the church where our Grace and the Wretched Wretch worship, somebody sells eggs from the garden gate.  They keep rescued battery hens, and leave out boxes of eggs for people to help themselves.  The prices are very modest, there’s an honesty box for the money, and empty egg boxes are dropped off to be used again.  That fulfils all my criteria: zero food miles and Grace was going to church anyway, so there isn’t even travel to the shop), compassion for the animals, nothing has died, small family business, zero packaging (except re-used which is better than re-cycled), no shop-fittings (lights, electronic tills, displays) using Earth resources, the animals are naturally fed and free-range. Perfect!

So the lemon curd in the picture was made with lemons (no packaging, straight in my own cloth Buddha bag) from the greengrocer near Hebe’s masonry down by the sea, margarine from Trinity wholefoods (a co-operative down in Hastings), fair-traded sugar from the Co-op (a big chain but democratic), and eggs from next door to Pett chapel.  Cooked up on our electric hotplate fuelled by sunshine via our solar panels on the roof.  Eaten with bio-dynamic butter from free-range cows via Trinity wholefoods, on sinfully white bread from the baker round the corner from the masonry.  In the sunshine :0)

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365 Day 16 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

2 pairs of trousers, sent to Barnados charity shop.  Two things to go today, to balance with an incoming garment.  If I have something completely new, I balance it by disposing of two items that don’t even appear in the blogged list – but the garment here was something that used to be mine that our Alice has had for a few years and now given back to me – a fleece hoodie.  I’ll add in an extra book given away but not blogged, to be sure I’m not accumulating.

Watching

Most weekdays our Hebe sits cutting the letters of gravestones beside the stonemasonry window, above the garage where the hearses are kept and with a view over the forecourt on the edge of Mercatoria near the bottom of the hill by the sea.  Her window looks out towards the back of commercial premises lining London Road; the sun slants in on her work over their roofs.  Sometimes she has to give up her position in the good light of the window if the police want to use the masonry for a stake-out. 

One of the neighbours does a line in stolen lead, and the masonry can never keep theirs on the roof very long.  Hebe watches the drug trading down in the street, the shifty dealers looking this way and that and over their shoulders.

The rasta men saunter by, and the mosque is just along the road so some halal shops have opened up in the neighbourhood.  In the closed-down Methodist temperance holiday hotel round the corner, refugees from Eastern Europe were housed.  As the restrictions on their freedom to earn a living eased up, they began to spread out and settle in.  Refugees from Somalia have added to the mix.  Our Grace taught them English in the language school for a while before she became a full-time mother, and friends made back then still call and wave across the street. 

This is one of the poorest quarters of town so many of the confused and stumbling weave in and out of the passers-by – people with mental illnesses and the challenges of myriad disabilities; very old people struggling on and off the bus with trolleys for their shopping and possessions; people whose complexions and unsteadiness and unfocussed eyes tell the tale of alcohol as a travelling companion down a long downhill trail.

The small greengrocer’s has been given a new lease of life because the proprietor’s son failed to make his fortune in the city and has come back to this ramshackle sprawl by the ocean to try his hand at selling cabbages and artichokes, Sussex honey and apple juice.  Down on the seafront, Smiths Real Food café and Plenty with its delicious bread and cornucopia of wonder feed us well.   The charity shops sprout plentifully here, and the Kings Road Flea Market, the Coast Tea Rooms with its glorious cakes, Jempson’s bakery and any number of second-hand shops, and odd emporia like the stamp and coin collector’s corner, do well – or at least eke out the possibility of a tomorrow.

The Chinese restaurant takes deliveries just across from the masonry forecourt, and Hebe watches as the whole family pours out onto the pavement to take in sacks of rice and a variety of provisions.  The father of the family bows to her with Asian courtesy and grace as she passes him on her way in to the masonry in the morning sun.  

One day a visitor to the masonry left his bicycle on the forecourt, and tried to collect it as he left.  The Chinese family, out on the street unloading goods, assumed the bike was Duncan’s and the man a thief.  Not recognising him, they accosted him full of staccato Chinese indignation and tried to prevent him leaving with his bike.  Piers, cutting a stone, down in the garage off the forecourt, understood the situation and tried to remonstrate: but Piers is profoundly deaf and could contribute only sign language to the confusion.

The huge crucified Christ on the wall of the anglo-catholic church watches silently over this extraordinary melée of humanity.  In an attempt to dignify His presence they gilded his loin-cloth recently, and His crown of thorns.  It is possible they have not quite understood.

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365 Day 15 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

Oh, a poster of the rejoicing as the shepherd recovers the lost sheep.  This is the artwork of Sieger Köder and has been up on the wall of our kitchen for some time.  Now the kitchen is to be grey and cream and restrained, Quakerish rather than the exuberant spice-box colours it was; so the picture no longer fits in.  It made a good fire-lighter.

The luxury fire

We have 2 fires, a woodstove in the large, north-facing front room where the piano is and everyone can fit in, and an open hearth, in the smaller back room that opens onto the herb bed and looks down the garden.


The morning sun streams into the back room and the front room has indirect western light in the afternoon.


The woodstove is obviously way more economical than the open fire, but we kept the hearth rather than installing a  second woodstove because we love open fires.  


When I married Bernard and we lived in his cottage on the edge of Flatropers Wood in Beckley, our only heating was a woodstove, and Bernard jealously guarded his woodstack of 2-year seasoned logs.  So when I wanted an open fire to sit by, he said "Well, you needn't think you're going to be using my wood, you can gather your own!" And he made me a wonderful handcart painted chinese red, to go wooding.


I apply a similar principle to the fires here - the back room open hearth I think of as "the luxury fire" because it burns fast and uncontrolled, and the woodstove is "the responsible fire".


Therefore on the open hearth I burn sticks and fir-cones collected on walks and in the garden, and paper and card packaging.  I figure that if we wanted a fire anyway, it makes sense to burn packaging rather than recycle it and burn wood, since recycling is itself an industrial process.  


The picture shows the luxury fire in action :0)


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365 Day 13 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

Still wading through the florist's supplies. 6mm anchor tape today.  These florist's things went to a lady along the road from us, a keen flower-arranger.  Her husband spotted them on Freecycle.

Candlelight

Light fascinates and delights me.

As a child in church one of my favourite things was watching the light falling on the polished wood of the pews through the coloured glass of the  windows ("gules" they call this, or Keats does).  I love stained glass.  I prefer abstract patterns to pictures, because I find the story of the picture occupies my consciousness and asserts an irritating distraction I cannot suppress from the light interacting with the glass in its colours and textures, which is what I want to look at.   I love light passing through water.  Swimming in lakes, I love the amber light with all the whirling silt and weed.  Swimming in (indoor) swimming pools, I love passing under the skylight windows, so that I feel for a moment I am swimming through sunshine.

This morning I woke in the still-dark, fell asleep again and woke at sunrise, our big roof windows lit with a glory of salmon and azure, lavender, pearl, turquoise and peach.  So beautiful.  I lay and watched it, thinking of John the Baptist’s question, “What did you come here to see?”  

“This,” I thought: “I came here to see this.”

Inspired by Diana Lorence, I am experimenting more than usual with candle-light (this household couldn't function without a steady supply of night-lights anyway, we are all pyro-maniacs).  There have been times in the past when I have lived without electricity, but in a shared household where no-one wants to do that, this would not be practical.  The electronic media are very important to me.  My cell-phone is my alarm clock as well as my phone.  My laptop is a work tool and my (almost sole) communication with the world, and I am inspired and challenged and entertained by films watched on it – about the Indian Hill Railways, about the lives of monks and nuns, Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple films, YouTube videos and bout health and nutrition, ecology and environment; that’s the kind of thing I watch, and it keeps me cheerful and approximately sane.

But mostly our heating is the woodstove or open fire, and in the nights when the Badger is away (half the week) I have only candle-light in the garret now.  I am intrigued to discover the extent of immediacy that brings to the passing of the night, the rhythms of daylight and darkness.

My eyesight has had 54 years punishing addiction to books, and is helped by strong light, so if I want to read in bed I do have a book light.  Even so, I find the absence of electric houselights makes a difference.  Walking through shadow, with its mystery and peace, is very calming.  And candlelight has a comforting serenity.   It’s very welcome, because I loathe with a passion these eco-light bulbs we all have now, climbing from useless semi-darkness to a prison-harsh glare as they warm up.  Ugh.

So I’ve been reading about candles – beeswax versus paraffin wax, special bushcraft high-temperature-melt wax, etc.  And I’ve been thinking about candle-safety and house fires – communities like the Amish and the Carthusians seem to resign themselves to burning their places down on a regular basis.  Hmm.    And I’ve been thinking about smoke – about how surprisingly different the colour of Kings College Chapel was after they cleaned decades of candle-smoke off the walls.   Lanterns, I think, are the way to go.  I have a beautiful one as it happens – but the problem with burning tealights is they rarely re-light successfully so, not being an enthusiast for waste and already having all the wax scrapings we need for firelighters, I  choose between a whole evening or doing without.  I am turning over in my mind how to make a spike holder with a jam jar lid and a nail so  can use short church candles in the lantern without creating lots of wax runnels.  The lantern should minimise that anyway by eliminating draft.

Enough.  Breakfast time.  Off to make porridge . . .

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365 Day 12 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

More florist supplies.  12mm anchor tape this time.  Gosh, this one-item-a-day does concentrate the mind on life slipping by!  Twelve days of 2012 gone already! 

I wonder if you know this book

 The online community is heaving with geeks, and not an insignificant number of us (though by no means all) find it easy to hang out here because we experience socialising in real life as both hard and alarming.

Many the occasion when I stride home from some gathering muttering to myself, apologising to God for my inept and graceless conduct, resolving to say less and do better next time.  But God has heard it all before, and though I understand He has not given up on me, I don’t think He’s holding His breath either (I hope not, because if God holds His breath we all die, if my reading of the Psalm is correct).

People of limited understanding and experience frequently mock the Royal Family for their seemingly stilted social responses – “It is nice to meet you,” etc.  Such derision exhibits a failure to grasp the function in a formal setting of ritualised phrases and interactions.  A larking about style of Queen high-fiving her subjects and greeting them with “Yo, dude, how’s it hanging?” would not only make herself unseemly, she would also be forever placing her subjects in the awkward position of having no rehearsed response or clear set of social guidelines for successful, respectful, dignified formal conversation.

Where a meeting is merely empty ritual, it feels distinctly chilly of course.  Ideally one’s meetings and conversations should feel warm and affirming.

I am a natural geek.  Nerd to the nth degree.  Look no further for an example of tactlessness.  I think the nadir of my social gracelessness was the occasion when despite my repeated attempts to make things better (each effort simply digging me in deeper) I finally received a letter from an enraged clergyman telling me I was psychotic, sick, destructive and a number of other things (he went on for a couple of pages but I no longer have the letter) now long forgotten.  I do try hard to avoid inadvertently upsetting people to quite that degree, but I certainly make as many enemies as friends.

So I keep near me this wonderful Book of Courtesy by Sister Mary Mercedes, a Dominican nun, who explains, teaches, guides, instructs, in the mysteries of how to be nice to people.  She tells me what I have to say and do, to avoid making a complete twit of myself and driving normally dignified people into a state of teeth-gnashing fury at my inherently objectionable personality.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially if you, like me, generally feel safer in the company of animals and computers than your fellow human beings.

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365 Day 11 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

Paper covered bindwire.  Another casualty of the flower rota débacle.   The original flower lady (God be thanked) decided to stay on, for a while at least.  

Squid Juice

 This is my third attempt at writing and entitling a blog post.  The first was mournful and self-pitying, the second peevish and defensive, laying blame on others for problems originating squarely with me.

In our house we have a phrase, “squid-juicing”.  Squids, as you no doubt know, emit clouds of inky stuff when they feel threatened (at least, I think they do; I don’t think I made that up . . .).   Some people pull a very similar trick.   When they feel guilty or low or out of their depth – even, sometimes, just bored – they start emitting evil negative stuff – sarky remarks, grumbling, complaining, criticising: none of it justified, just squid-juicing.  I do that.  Today I’m on that trip.  Again.  Hush, Ember.  Read a book or something.  Spare human society your company.  Tiptoe away.

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365 Day 10 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

Florist’s scissors.  Casualties of the flower rota débacle.  More related items to follow over the next few days.  

Buying things

While cruising around the blogs of friends the other day, I read Beth Dopp’s reading list with great interest.  Thanks for including my In Celebration of Simplicity, Beth – much appreciated!

Intrigued by one of her favourites from her reading of 2011, No Impact Man by Colin Beavan, I went across to Amazon and read what I could of the Look Inside preview.  Brilliant!  Funny, inspiring, thought-provoking, hard-hitting.  I am reading it now on my Kindle.

That brings me to a crossroads, a question place.  Part of my 365 adventure is getting rid of 2 things for every new thing I acquire (even if that’s donated by another member of the household from their chuck-out).  So when I bought 3 fleece sweaters (I wear these constantly) from Lands' End UK in their big January sale, I duly donated 6 garments from my closet to a charity caring for children with cancer, and those garments won’t appear in the 365 blogged items.

But

Though that does indeed keep down my level of possessions, I think it would be more frugal and environmentally responsible if I slow right down on acquisition of new things – especially mass-produced new things probably made in sweat-shops.  I did check out the manufacturing ethics of Lands' End, and was pleased to read on their website that their manufacturing partners use no child or forced labour, and pay fair wages – even so reading “made in Cambodia” on the label stops their reassurances laying my suspicions entirely to rest.  

Part of my New Year resolutions and mindset behind the 365 adventure is to remember the human and cherish the Earth; so though in a moment of absentmindedness I did order those fleeces and will be pleased to have them (they certainly contribute to living with very low winter heating as we do), in general I will be trying to cut right back on the shopping and ensuring that the purchases I do make are for the most part hand-made, local (or fairly traded in from overseas) and sourced from small family businesses.

But I hadn’t given any thought to Kindle purchases.  I guess though they help keep the house de-cluttered, there is such a thing as electronic clutter too.  So I will investigate my memory sticks and consign 2 large files to the bin to balance the clutter-scales again after buying Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man.

I am not in favour of simply stopping buying things, though.  My daughters are musicians and craftspeople, I am a writer and the Badger is a publisher.  We know all too well that being able to continue to fulfil what is truly vocational for us, not merely commercial, depends on sales of a viable level as well as frugality at home.  If no-one buys my books, only borrows them, then the book I have waiting for a yea-or-nay at the publisher (and depending on the sales of the ones already contracted) will never see the light of day.  That would be a pity because it was written not as a money-spinner but as a way of making available to the imagination of the reader some scriptural truths very health-giving for our society.  So I believe in buying books that have something worthwhile to say.  And I believe in supporting honest, responsible business enterprise.  It’s just the greedy consumer-fest I think needs reigning in, and the irresponsible over-creation of packaging and worthless knick-knacks.

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365 Day 9 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

 Last year our church had a fund-raising drive to pay for installing new toilets. 

When I was a child at primary school, we changed to decimal currency, so that shillings, half-crowns, sixpences and florins all vanished from our lives.  Up until that point, a penny was written 1d – an abbreviation of 1 denarius.  It changed to 1p (one penny) and shrank its value from one twentieth to one hundredth of a pound in a single deft move.

If you wish to use the public toilets in, say, London Charing Cross railway station today, I believe the going rate to get in through the automated turnstile is 30p.

When I was a child there would be no turnstile at the entrance, but each of the doors to the individual stalls in the public toilets would be opened by inserting a coin into the slot – 1d, a penny.  Hence, “spending a penny” was the euphemism of choice in polite society for temporarily vanishing into the bathroom to empty one’s bladder.

So it was that someone at St Johns came up with the idea of “Save a penny to spend a penny”, and asked us all to save our small loose change – the coppers, the 1p and 2p coins – to support the fundraising drive.

This struck me as something our household could comfortably do, so I pressed into service for silver 5p pieces an old hummus carton and for the coppers a bucket that had once held meringues bought to share with a cup of tea by our friends Erik Kuilenberg and Carien Bloema on their family visit with their children Ben, Huub and Jolijt last summer.

I cut slots in the lids like real money boxes, and we started saving.

In my somewhat OCD manner, I felt reluctant to part with the accumulated loot until the tubs were actually full.  The toilets were built, blessed, up and running before our containers reached the half-way mark.  But still we plodded on.  This week it occurred to me – you know what?  The time has gone.  So I put the tubs out for recycling, and took the stash of mini-loot up to the coin-star machine at the supermarket, which yielded £12.82 that I duly added to the regular collection at church last Sunday.

Mouse tales. Not for the squeamish.

Our two cats look sweet but are fearless and ferocious.  Only last night Edwin (pictured above looking innocent) came charging in from the garden carrying a large worm.

Their exploits as hunters are trying to say the least.

A couple of months back, I felt uneasy about the vague whiff of death that seemed to be developing in our living room.  Sitting on the sofa drinking a cup of tea, it seemed to me that the general atmosphere lacked freshness.  I commented on this to my youngest daughter, to whom the problem was not immediately apparent.

“Come in,” said I.  “Come in properly and sit where I was sitting just there in the middle of the sofa, then I think you’ll – ”

“AAAGGH!   THERE’S A MOUSE!!!”

Just on the verge of taking a seat she spotted what I had overlooked: a well dead mouse laid out just there adjacent to where I’d been sitting.  That explained the smell, then.

This last week, in the kitchen this time – the temporary kitchen which is not usually a kitchen at all and where consequently we also have a sofa – I sat down on the sofa sipping tea while I waited patiently for my porridge to cook. 

I happened to glance down at the cushion alongside me.  I should explain that our sofas are not simple affairs where a dead rodent would be immediately obvious, but muddles of multi-coloured throws and cushions and sheepskins.

“?” I thought.  “That’s . . . that’s a tail!”

Further investigation confirmed that the object beside me on the sofa was indeed someone’s tail – attached still to its now deceased owner, a dear little house-mouse with a pointy nose and sweet ears.  Extremely sad.

Then the day before yesterday I decided to tackle the Christmas Leftovers in the fridge.  Epiphany loomed on the horizon, and it seemed to me that some of that collection of bowls and plastic storage boxes must be due for a turn-out.

I started with the small plastic sealed tub of aduki beans sitting on the top shelf.  It had been there since before Christmas, I knew that much.  The wall of the tub allowed me to determine the contents but not verify the state of their condition: not until I removed the lid did the advancing glutinous grey-green slime enveloping the beans become apparent.  Right, then.  Into the compost bucket with them!

I also knew there to be a small bowl containing a portion of trifle at the back of the middle shelf.  I hooked it out.  Hmm.  Not actually rotting as such, but no longer appetising either.  I chucked that in the compost bucket with the aduki beans and the other various peelings already there.

Unable to avoid facing the truth that the noble thing to do would be take the bucket down the garden and empty it into the compost heap without further delay, I actioned the promptings of conscience, taking a spoon to scrape out the bucket into the big bin.

Even with the spoon, the bucket still exhibited slimy cling-ons, and I thought I’d better rinse it out with the rainwater in the watering can before taking it back into the house, given that our washing-up facilities are limited while the kitchen is in pupation.

So I grabbed the watering can and sloshed some rainwater accumulated therein into to compost bucket.  As often happens, the out-sloosh of water stopped because something blocked the spout.  Snails and dead leaves etc drop in sometimes, and gather blocking the spout when the can is used.  I put down the can, swished round the bucket, tossed the swill-water across the herb-bed and turned back to the can for a second lot of rinse-water.  “!”

“What the hey?!”

There, unmistakeably, from the spout, protruded a long grey-whiskered pink tail and a pair of feet!  Oh, my life!!

Nonplussed for a moment, I looked at the can.  Then it occurred to me that giving the remaining rainwater in it a mighty swoosh down the spout might eject the beast within like a kind of awful parody of birth.  This proved to be the case, and a small rat-ling was delivered upon the herb bed, where I buried it.

I tell you, it’s a white-knuckle ride living here in St Leonards!

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365 Day 8 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

A fragrant beeswax candle.  Disposed of this in the obvious manner; very nice too.  So many objects end up like this, cluttering up drawers because I mean to put them to good use one day – but never get around to it.

Subscriptions and Alice Popkorn

Totally blown away by this picture by Alice Popkorn called Path of Life.  Love it, love it.

I came across it while checking out a new blog.  I almost never subscribe to blogs by email.  I enjoy (sometimes) reading Country Living magazine, so the Badger kindly gave me a subscription to it as a gift – I felt so pleased, looking forward to it arriving every month; and of course one saves a lot of money by taking out a subscription.  But as the months went by I found it wasn’t as I’d expected and imagined.  To my surprise, much of the pleasure had been not the magazine itself but the idea of it.  I liked looking in the newsagent wherever I happened to be, wondering “Is the new issue out yet?  Do they even stock it here?”  And the triumphant “Aha!” of pouncing on the new Country Living when I found a newsagent that stocked it.  Once I had the sub, I still thought “Oh, good” when it arrived – but it was indeed increasingly “Oh, good”, not “Oh, good!”   So when my dear Badger offered to renew the subscription, I said no.  He is a kind (even indulgent!) husband, so he bought it anyway, thinking I might be being frugal and self-denying.  The next year I got to the mail first and destroyed the reminder before he saw it.  Having it delivered every month actually kind of immunised me against Country Living, so that I don’t really enjoy it at all any more.

I have not long ago taken out a subscription to Resurgence because you can’t get it in the regular shops near me.  I will take it for a year then maybe have a rest from it.  I have a kind of love-hate relationship with Resurgence: as a publication it is heavily influenced (as you might expect) by the personality of its editor, Satish Kumar – but while part of me finds him inspirational part of me finds him intensely irritating, and reading his articles I often think the editor could do with rather more rigorous editing himself.  I used to subscribe to Resurgence years ago, until the irritation overwhelmed the inspiration, so I stopped it for a long while – but it really is one of its kind, unique and special.  The Badger has a subscription to Permaculture, which is a wonderful publication – brilliant, totally recommend.  He also has the Church Times which is jolly good and has the advantage of being printed on the kind of paper that’s suitable for lighting the fire.

But when it comes to blogs, I have an email subscription to Zen Habits which functions something like a Tent Inspection – the email alerts remind me that I’m doing my life all wrong even if I can’t always find the motivation to do anything about it.  I also have a subscription to Magdalena Perks’ blog Anglican, Plain, principally because Magdalena is one of the dottiest people I have ever met (I say this with affection); you can see it in her eyes, she has the gaze of a fox!  She walks the wild side of plain and intrigues me immensely.  That alone would not be enough to make me subscribe to her blog (I'd still read it because it's fascinating, but I wouldn't get the alerts); but I worry about her – that’s why I have the email alerts.  Magdalena has the courage and the individuality to pursue her path of choice against all the odds, despite her husband’s chronic health problems and the terrible allergies that dog her.  Her determination and vision are colossal, admirable, and I like to keep a check on how she is so that she can’t fall into any rows or disasters without my being alerted at least to pray and care.

But for the most part what I like is checking down the list in the sidebar here to see who’s posted something new; part of the pleasure is that hopeful moment when I come over here to Kindred of the Quiet Way, checking out what you’ve been up to over in your neck of the woods.  For some reason Julie’s blog (which is always worth reading) doesn’t take in terms of image and date of last post – but I click on it every time just in case she’s written something new.  If I subscribed to them all the irritation factor would kick in and I’d feel bombarded – but coming to see who’s posted what always feels like fun.

However – I have just taken out an email subscription to a blog;  Tess at Anchors and Masts has created a blog called Pilgrim’s Moon, which she describes as about “growing older on our own terms, a counter-cultural path for women.”  She says this about it: “[Pilgrim’s Moon] seeks to explore new ways of aging that move away from the main alternatives society gives us of looking abnormally young for as long as possible or fading into a blue-rinse twilight zone and shutting up.”

Anchors and Masts is an excellent website, and I really like the sound of Pilgrim’s Moon  (I’ll post a link in the side-bar here as well): when I went across to check it out, almost the first thing my eye fell on was the beautiful picture by Alice Popkorn called Path of Life up at the top of the post here.  I think her pictures are amazing.  Amazing.  AMAZING.  A.mazing.   I mean, just look at this one:

Or this one!

You can see a gallery of her work here.

Oh.  I got side-tracked!  I came here meaning to tell you some stories about mice, but that’ll keep till tomorrow.

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365 Day 7 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

Jesus (see this post).  He found a home!  When I took him round to Buzz’s place yesterday she confessed that when we had him in his manger at Christmas time she hadn’t looked at him properly, because she knew that if she looked at him she’d want to take him home.  ‘Once a mama…’ eh?

Anyway, he will be put to work helping run Buzz’s Tuesday group Bébé au Lait, which is for mothers with babies and toddlers and ladies expecting babies – a place to find out about slings (and arrows of outrageous fortune) and baby info – think about birth stories and gentle parenting, and be in an environment where both breast-feeding and bottle-feeding mothers can feel welcomed and accepted.  Jesus, being correctly sized and weighted for a newborn, will come in handy for demonstrating slings without bothering anyone’s actual baby, and for demonstrating breast-feeding positions etc.  Perfect.