Magical talisman

close to the heart 😉

(this was exceedingly weird, taking selfies of one’s .. well.. bosom 😉 but it was all for a good cause and in gratitude for the lovely gift)

Remember the SpReAd the love initiative from the end of last year? I was the very lucky winner of Lucas North 😀 Time to thank the lovely Oscura properly (and sorry for the shameful delay)!!!! It’s beautiful and i think it’s sort of magical too and i certainly needed the bit of sparkle these last few weeks…

Before i go on, please check out the latest SprReAd the love – Children’s  books idea 🙂 I am sure there is a whole new generation of kids out there who need to know about the Hobbit 😉 or any other lovely stories you grew up with (in my case more like the brothers Grimm fairytales) .

I have no idea how come it is already February or where the time went. It’s been hectic at best and stressful most of the time. In this short time i’ve had 3 friends in hospital with ‘light’ problems around heart, kidney and thyroid. Various weeks, treatments and surgeries later the prognosis looks good all round although it has been a bumpy ride. It has also been really scary because we’re talking young people here mostly, in one case even younger than me.

Then i’d barely returned to London from visiting my parents when they both fell ill and caught some terrible colds/flu that they could barely speak for a few weeks. And let me tell you that worrying at a distance is horrible because you constantly feel out of control and not really knowing how things are. Just when they had stopped coughing through every word yesterday my dad tells me he’s in hospital until next week… He expresses himself wonderfully.. grrr!! because thankfully it turned out he is in for a bigger check -up and medication adjustment. It is still a worry as we are talking cardiology here, but ‘nothing changed as far as they can tell’ was actually good news in the end. I could have done with the news being delivered slightly differently than him saying ‘i’m calling you at work to tell you i’m in hospital….’

At the same time work was a splendour of bad planning with jobs scheduled too short, overrunning into the next job until i had 5 balls juggling last week and my desk had become like information at the central station! On Friday i felt like murdering somebody when my 3 respective managers went out for lunch for the 4th time that week while i had to work through mine at my desk.. you have 1 guess as to who had been doing all the work, including meetings they were too busy to attend… I think i may have come across slightly pissy once or twice..

By now i had taken to wearing my talisman like this over jumpers 😉 (and as above under thick woolly jumpers)

L for..???

If this wasn’t going to work, nothing would!

At ‘home sweet home’, which is an over 100 years old conservation house, the temperature was ‘conservation’ indeed, never went beyond 20C at max even with heating at full whack. Not surprisingly as this has so far been the coldest winter since i’ve lived in the UK and the house still has sliding windows on ropes and paper thin walls (living in noisy sound communion with the neighbours is quite exciting i tell you…). I even degraded myself to sleeping with socks and in a bathrobe on top of pyjamas which i swore i’d never do before the age of 60! And buying a hot water bottle  became an appealing idea… i would have caved had the freeze lasted one more week.

Luckily i was saved from the purchase by the weather which went back to expected pouring rain last weekend, phew …blessed normality!

It seems some magic did happen as over the last 2 weeks some good things came my way too… well, not the bus strike which meant i had to walk to work on the day of pouring rain…. but i had a great run of Andrea Chenier at the ROH with my favourite singer, who’s still as gorgeous as ever, this occasion also prompted 3 sets of visitors to London & my home; also, a horse riding friend extended her generous involvement with the riding club to me as well and i got to visit the beautiful drum horses  of the Household Cavalry for the 2nd time! Yes, it is those same that you get to admire at the parades for the Queen, more info here. These gents are beautiful!!! (and i’m talking about the horses here, who by the way have the rank of Sergeant Major 🙂

Meet Achilles and Adamus:

They were really well behaved and i only took a very few snaps as i was busy feeding them treats, apples and carrots 😉 This one didn’t really want to stay still so he’s nearly out of the shot.. i’d just fed him an apple and he wanted more so was looking at my bag 🙂

They have biiig teeth and i was a bit afraid to extend my hand with the apple, but these are young and well behaved and not used to being spoiled, yet 😉 so they kept their teeth politely away from my fingers (i know , my mind went there as well..). i just got some very sloppy hand kisses 🙂

As you can see, even at my nearly 1,70 i am looking way up at them, to give you an idea of size, here next to some humans:

They have to be big and strong and very disciplined though to carry the very heavy silver drums. And very patient because they allowed me to pat them and stroke them without moving away or shoving me.

In addition to these 4 legged lords i also met a nice two legged gent at the theatre on Friday, the 13th! Stuck in incredibly cramped conditions on tortuously uncomfortable chairs and drenched from the rain we did manage to enjoy the View from the bridge with Mark Strong (hopefully more on that in a few days as it is worth a separate chat) due to the niceties exchanged before the show started. Rather than having me shuffle and squeeze past, he offered to change seats so i could just sit where i was and when i excused myself for my bag and wet coat and promised to wriggle as little as possible during the play in spite of the seat, he assured me very friendly that it would be no bother at all and to just not worry and be comfortable. Really nice person! Who even exchanged a smile and wished me a nice rest of the evening at the end after we both said how much we enjoyed it in spite of the seats. I’m not often as lucky with seat neighbours.

So here’s to Oscura for the lovely gift 🙂 and hopefully this will bring about a change from the start of the year. Ah, forgot to say, funny coincidence, one channel in my package is just starting to air Spooks so i’ve got it recording as it broadcasts and am just now getting to know Lucas 🙂

To follow probably more on the Red Dragon book which i have now read and have things to say about. I did listen to the poetry on some of the bus rides across town,  but i’m not really in a soppy mood, Valentines&pink&red are sooo not my thing and in any case i am ambivalent about the choices and the mood of the thing; so i’ll sit on it for a while and talk about it later and maybe i’ll give it another listen or two in the meantime.

Plenty happening even after the Hobbit and i have to say Thorin is still present in my mind,as is the Crucible; i seem to move at a much slower pace than the rest of the world, so please bear with me if my posts are out of sync with goings on.