Wednesday Wind Up: Coming Back to Where I Started

Wednesday Wind Up: 

How glad am I that I started these posts, a couple of years ago? I have been rereading some old ones and it's such an easy way to keep tabs on life. I'd forgotten buying a watch for playground duty (that watch, like the rest, didn't last). Or how many books I used to read. Any how, I'm back, and this time it's personal. As in, this is my personal blog, my online diary. I'm still hyggering away with How To Hygge The British Way, but that's not a family blog. I can't share things at a whim, I find it more of a thinking space than a chatting place. I need both. I have missed you all, and after I posted on Monday I had two beautiful replies saying welcome back. Thank you. I have been to the Emerald City, and it was all very well, but there's no place like Home.

So my plan is, even if only on a Wednesday or Thursday for the Wind Up, to post regularly over here. Just for me. I don't expect people to follow or comment, although if you do that would be wonderful. This really is just a record of a very ordinary life of an ordinary woman.

What am I reading this week?

I am currently reading Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. It's our bookclub choice for April, so I have to have read it by Monday 23rd. I can appreciate that it's interesting, and written in a very particular style, with the years and months (or is that months and years?) of a girl's disappearance being marked by the inhabitants of a village. Initial concern and discussion fades as time goes by, unless another little clue or finding is made that brings her fate back into the limelight. I'm not sure they'll ever find her or the body. It's not a neat police procedural, but a narrative novel. The use of nature bound in with human thought and actions is good. In the same sentence he will talk about the curlew's cry and the farmer doing whatever seasonal act he should. The list of characters is rather long, and the novel jumps from one to the other, so it's not one for you if you like latching onto a person and getting emotionally involved.

I have just finished Women Vs Feminism by Joanna Williams.  I hate the idea of Gender Wars, while also being able to say that there is an imbalance between the sexes that cuts both ways over different things. I was a Stay at Home Mum, so I think I'm one of the forgotten females of feminism. I'd like my personal choice validated, but instead I get told that I should have gone out to work, created a career and got to the top. Otherwise I have wasted my education and intelligence. I could be rude but I won't be.

Life isn't fair and has never been fair. Reading this book showed me that there are still multi-facets to life and balance that don't get a lot of press, possibly because the people involved don't have the press presence to do so. I'm all for choice, so I think men and women have to get together and discuss how choice can really work in this world. I don't want to call myself a feminist, if feminism sets out to assert female superiority. I believe in equality. 

I will also be reading The Lost Art of Letter Writing by Menna van Praag. It's set in Cambridge, and has stationery in it. What's not to like? I'll let you know next week how I get on.

What have I watched this week?

Not a lot, I say, and then think why.....

This year I have a second year university student with work and exams coming up, a second son sitting A levels and a 16 year old conscientious daughter with GCSEs who got herself in a right tizzy on Monday about revision. We spend a couple of hours each evening looking (and feeling) like a remake of Little Women, if half of them were men, with no TV and a steady diet of reading, discussing the finer points of physics and maths and sometimes, just sometimes, a cuddle of a guinea pig to make us relax. Do that until 9 or 9.30 and there's not a lot of time for TV.

Fortunately, I have Netflix on my phone, and I am watching Hitler's Circle of Evil. Yes, very cosy viewing. It's actually really ineresting because although it seems so obvious now that Hitler was a really evil man, it is still fascinating that some of Germany's best people followed him and undoubtedly helped him achieve his evil plans. The programme concentrates on those around Hitler and shows, through docudrama and interviews with historians, how each one of them had a part to play both in his rise and eventual downfall. Sadly, Nazis were human beings too, so jealousy, anger, resentment, greed and ideaology all played a part.

For relaxation I have also been watching Gaslight. This is the 1944 Hollywood version with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. There's an earlier British version which I mean to watch as well, later in the month. Gaslight is the story of a woman who marries in haste but may not have time to repent at leisure. It still lives on in the term 'gaslighting', meaning to persuade someone that they are not well or mad, and getting them to agree with you over stuff. Gripping, good old cinema. 

Where have I been this week?

Work. Home. Work. Home. I took a couple of days off over Easter to decorate (still no photos of that!) but otherwise I have not ventured far.

How has my spending gone this week?

Do I have to answer that? Badly. I have overspent on decorating and on entertainment, since I wanted to buy some new wool to finish a project. And books are too easy to buy now. I could do with disconnecting my Kindle so that I only buy a book when I have finished the one I'm reading.

What are my WIPs this week?

My crochet mojo is in full steam. I'm still busy with my cream Spice of Life, which I'm making for the Hygge Nook in my house. I must only be a maximum of 20 rows from completion, and then I can border it and use it. 

And my other WIP is a crochet bag. I went on a workshop with Jane Crowfoot... back in 2016!... and it was a bag based on her Frida Kahlo blanket. I got the majority of the square crocheted on the day, natch, because I am quite a quick crocheter when I get going, but then it sat in a bag in the corner of my bedroom. I found it when I was tidying up this weekend, and thought it would make a good crochet project holding bag.

Actually, now I'm further along it, I like it too much to just let it lie as a project bag. I think it will get proper use as a daily bag, especially since the bright colours and styling will make it a good one to use in the summer. The flower square is an external pocket, and the body of the bag is black with a single stripe every four rows. The stripes match the pocket colours, see? With proper lining and a red leather handle, it should be a really cute handbag for the summer.

Any Other Business?

I have begun thinking ahead and booking events to celebrate my 50th this year. My motto for the year is just say yes, so I am going to or hoping to go to as many experiences as I can. I've got a couple of theatre trips booked with family, and a crochet workshop at the excellent Black Sheep Wools. My workshop's not listed here, which I think means it's probably sold out. It's for beaded crochet, so I'm not surprised!

What are you up to this week? I'll be working in the office, and writing my next book. It's on how to be happier. I've nearly finished the writing part, then comes editing and typesetting. Fortunately, publishing with Amazon is an easy thing or I might never have bothered!