Stories that make sense
But it’s difficult to hem a garment that’s underneath a cat. She’s very cosy on my cosy jacket. (Charity shop find, several years ago, and it’s improved every winter since.)
I know the skirt looks like it’s hemmed. There’s quite a lot that you can’t see that still needs doing.
It is a decade, more or less, since I decided that if I was moving to Cambridge then I really needed to learn (again) to ride a proper bike. I achieved this by riding one round and round Woking park. Now I am doing the same thing, round and round, trying to get used to the cargo bike. (It really helps, I have found, not to think about how huge it is out front.)
I’ve written before about the multiplicity of angles that Ely cathedral manages to present. I rather like this one, with the march of the wheelie bins and the huddle of hoarding, and the towers rising serenely behind. This is a real place, and real things happen here.
I did it. I added gold ribbon to make the ripples in the fishpond. It’s a bit wonky but it’s the best I could do without getting up from the sofa and waking the baby. It’ll look fine when the skirt’s on and the fabric falls into folds.
Now I have just over a week to hem it. Which ought to be fine, but it’s a very long hem.
It’s a miserable grey day. We dodged the rain but the sky is still gloomy. But there’s plenty of colour underfoot. It’s a question of perspective.
I’m wondering at the moment whether I’m capable of worrying less, of resisting my tendency to let fear for what might be suck the joy out of what is. There is a lot of exploring to do.
The west front of the cathedral has been hidden behind scaffolding for most of this year. But just this week it’s emerged again, with the porch looking very new and clean. Just in time for next week’s baptism service. (Also, of course, Remembrance Sunday and the Christmas fair, but I’m less interested in those!)
I passed this wall as I walked home this afternoon, and had to stop to take a second look. I could say something about how the temporal and the eternal are all mixed up together. I could say something about having to be willing to let go in order to produce something really spectacular. But actually I just thought it was beautiful.
We had a John Lewis voucher to spend, so got some winter gear. I am not a great adherent of the cult of Pink For Girls, but all the other snowsuits were lacking in feet, sold out of the appropriate size, or unspeakably tasteful. (Read: boring. And liable to look grubby.)
I’m finding things a little difficult at the moment. No sooner did the baby concede to sitting in a bouncy chair so I could get on with doing things than I slipped getting out of the shower and bashed my knee and had to spend three days in bed and two weeks on the sofa. No sooner did my knee get back to normal than the dark closed in. Still, things are generally not as bad as all that, and all over my home town people are decorating their windows to remind me of it. None more so than this.
Today the sky is very blue and the grass is very green and the sunlight is making everything 25% more beautiful than it was before. And compared to yesterday, which was a day of wind and drizzle, it’s at least 200% more beautiful.
Kathleen Jowitt 