Streaming

I loved the way these tall grasses were streaming in the wind. They grow in a garden on the hillside, beside the lane, and I often admire them when I walk past, but on this windy, windy day they were at their best. I thought about Piglet's ears streaming in the wind,  just as P said mine did when we walked on a dyke at Den Helder, at the northern tip of the North Holland Peninsula, on the chilliest and most blusterous day of an Interrail summer most of a lifetime ago. He lent me his red bobble hat. I hadn't even considered packing a hat for our summer rail tour of Europe. I find myself turning more and more to old memories now, as we approach four years of not travelling, visiting indoor venues or meeting people face to face. I guess we're not making so many new ones, though the daily observation of landscape, garden and weather have in some measure replaced the more varied menu of experiences we used to enjoy.

It was a nice enough day. J's online Art Talk focused on Scottish women artists. Our discoveries, from a fairly hasty Google search, were Anne Redpath and Joan Eardley, as well as more of Elizabeth Blackadder's work. J loves all her cat drawings. The Scottish themed January has been rewarding, looking more at artists whose work we've seen a little, and finding others who were entirely new to us. Later, I prepared kale from the garden for P to cook tomorrow and stewed rhubarb from the freezer; and finally I tried to organise for tomorrow's early start. It's only a wheelchair appointment, nothing exciting, but it takes a long time to get J up and we will be driving in the rush hour, so I need to set the alarm for 5:45 if we are to be in Ashford by nine. I remind myself that I used to do this every day when I was still teaching and J was at school.