Sunday 2 May 2010

I'm sorry for the stabbing pain in your eyes

It's non-stop rain all day, and a long weekend to boot. Household chores are all done to my satisfaction (read into that what you will), next batch of seeds are already potted up, only myself to please this weekend, so I will indulge myself with a long posting.

First of all, many thanks to Jo at The Good Life for awarding me one of the Lovely Blog Awards that she was dishing out last week. The rules of accepting the award are to link back to the blog that gave you the award (thanks again Jo!), to tell you 7 random things about myself, and to offer to forward the award on to other blogs that I feel deserve them.

So. Here goes, seven (very) random things...

1.
My job involves looking after a number of old listed buildings, It's an interesting, rewarding and satisfying career, and at least half the time I genuinely look forward to going to work - I suspect not everyone can say that. However on a day-to-day basis, my general view and aspect is not as pleasant as you might imagine. I oversee a lot of maintenance contractors, so spend a lot of time looking at this kind of thing:


(shudder). Honestly. Put it away, please, I beg you. That's what belt-loops were invented for. No-one needs to spend their working life looking everywhere but at the mooning arse right in front of them. Quite literally your bum is the elephant in the room. No wonder I need to rest my eyes at the weekend in the great outdoors, looking at flowers, fruits & vegetables growing up at the plot.


2.
Now that I've bought up the delicate issue of contractors & inappropriate work-wear, my other bug-bear is contractors who wear boiler suits that are too small. I surely cannot possibly give you a picture for this one, it's not a pleasant sight, and not at all funny.


Really. It isn't.


No, really, I can’t.


I couldn't.


I shouldn't.


Oh alright, go on then:



And then, imagine if you will (because this is where it becomes a bit of an x-rated posting) said contractor having to reach over head-height to carry out a task.

Are you having trouble picturing it?

Allow me to help you out there:



I'm truly sorry - now we all need to go and rest our eyes in the garden. Take 5 minutes - go and look at some other blogs for a while and absorb the beauty of the magnificent tulip flower and magnolia blossom close-up shots and come back to me when you are ready.

Feeling better?

Then I shall go on.

3.
Last night I had the strange dream that I was an Olympic Gold medal swimmer. The reason for my talent was my enormous webbed feet, which gave me the edge over all other competitors. Weird & very vivid. Had to check my feet when I woke up.



They're not webbed, nor are they unusually large. And neither do I smell of chlorine. Or anything else ending in -rine, before you start with the funnies.

Kevin Costner’s Waterworld was on telly last night, I did briefly contemplate watching it, but decided to have an early night instead. That'll explain it.

4.
My all time ever favourite plant colour combination just now* is dark burgundy next to a very bright fresh green:

*see what I did there?

These are on my kitchen windowsill at the moment, and are much adored by me every time I do the washing up. It's a succulent called a Tree Aeonium, next to a ferny plant (which is technically a weed, as I didn't buy or cultivate it - just a seed that blew indoors on a breeze a few years ago and planted itself in the compost of my Money Plant). I like it, so it's stayed.

5.
I'm not exactly known for my sartorial elegance - if it's clean, has no holes and roughly fits, I'll wear it. I can think of lots of things I'd rather be doing than thinking about my appearance.

But if I could grow facial hair, I think I would spend many an hour in front of the mirror sculpting it into weird & wonderful shapes, just because I could:


But as middle age & menopause is probably not that far off (yay! bring it on!!). I could yet become the bearded lady with the wondrous leafy chin.

6.
I like things. My partner calls it clutter. Stuff. Junk. In my way.

Whatever.

I think of it as surrounding myself with objects imbued with meaning - whether it's things bought on holiday, decorative things that I’ve made or bought, or things that I’ve found. They all mean something to me. For example, here are a couple of the things that live on my shed windowsill - a zebra and a 3-legged cat:



Plastic tat to you perhaps. For me, they're things that tell the story of the plot I tend, as I found them while digging it over. After all, what better way of spending 20 minutes in the shed sheltering from a heavy downpour, than to sit there, scratch my chin, tilt my head to one side & ponder "what the hell kind of devil-child chewed the leg off that plastic cat?"

7.
Finally, which is less something revealed about myself, than a question I've been pondering all week. How hard it is to write 7 random things about yourself without revealing too much. Will I ever reveal details about who I am or what I do or where my plot is?



And now on to the list of blogs that I would like to pass these lovely awards on to.


Nina's Gardening Notebook
Hazel Tree
Urban Dirt
Frugilegus
Intemperate Edibles
The Inelegant Gardener
Shandy's Dig
Tiny Art Director
The Idiot Gardener

You can accept or ignore the awards as you please, just wanted you to know that I very much enjoy reading your blogs.

7 comments:

  1. Thank you very much for the award. I'm glad you enjoy the posts - I do try to mix in a couple of more interesting ones to balance the horribly detailed record for next year of what I've done this year.

    My wife an I love the illustrations on your posts - the pheasant post is our all-time favourite - the illustration fitted the words quite marvelously :)

    Now I'm off to explore the other recommendations you made in your post.

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  2. thank you for the award! i found myself wondering if you have a plastic dog that lives in the shed that could have chewed the plastic cats leg off?

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  3. Hi, a few days off and I have come back to this lovely award, thank you so much. A great list of other nominees as well, it's always nice to find new blogs to read so thanks for the suggestions. Hmmm now I have to work out how to put the awards on my blog...I might have to come back for help on that one (sorry not too techie me!) :-)

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  4. Glad that you've accepted the awards. I shall check out the blogs you've nominated.

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  5. I just saw your message and would like to say a big thank you for the award, it was lovely to see and I am delighted that you enjoy the blog.

    Big smiles!
    Shandy

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  6. What a great post - and your drawings ALWAYS bring a big smile to my face - I particularly like the first one - but then I worry that is how I look when gardening!
    You are so right about the boiler suits.
    K

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  7. Hey girl, I added you to my blog roll. I hope my tiny following leads to new readers for you! Take care, M

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