Glimpsesofcolour

More unrefusable offers from Freecycle:
Wanted: Traditional Wood Hat Stand. Presumably for the use of those who wear traditional wood hats.
Offered: Exercise bile. If exercise makes them that bitter I think they are right to give it up.
And finally, Offered: Friends. I have some already, thank you.
To change the subject, last weekend I went on retreat to my favourite retreat house (the one where there is nothing organized, you can just relax). I had plenty of time sitting in the sun in the garden with a good book, but my favourite moment was when what I thought was lemon meringue pie, which is a food abomination (how can you contaminate meringue, the food of the gods, with lemon curd, the food of Satan?), turned out to be Queen of Puddings, which is almost the best pudding ever barring syllabub and Eton Mess. Shallow, moi? But really, the food is one of the very best things about this particular retreat house.
I have returned with my youth renewed like The Eagles (didn’t they have a reunion tour recently?), but no lighter.

I have been alarmed and amused to see the following on Freecycle:

‘I am in desperate need of a outside rabbit hutch, I believed I brought
two female rabbits but one is actually a boy. So I really need to split them up a quickly as possible.’

Indeed she does. Otherwise they will be breeding like… well, like rabbits.

On a completely different tack (or not?) I have just drafted my first promising poem in three and a half years (in fact since I won the Barnet Open Poetry Competition, which seems to have completely destroyed my poetic ability for an extended period). I’m quite excited by this, as I have never had such a long poem-less period before. I was beginning to think I needed to fall in unrequited love again to inspire poetry. Which sort of brings us back to the rabbits…

I have been somewhat bemused to read on Freecycle the following announcement:

‘Wanted unwanted items’.

Surely if they are unwanted they can’t be wanted, but if they are wanted they can’t be unwanted? My head hurts…

Latest from my local Freecycle: ‘WANTED: Rubber cap for tubular leg’. Is it just me or does that sound disconcertingly surgical? (it turns out it was something to do with a bike rack on a car…).

Getting back to loftier matters, eleven of us sang our guts out at Turnpike Lane* underground last night in aid of Christian Aid. In our years of experience of this annual event, we have discovered that it takes precisely one and a half hours to sing one’s way through the entire Bethlehem carol sheet (with a short break for mulled wine, homebaked mince pies and Pfeffernüsse, provided by yours truly).

I then went to Covent Garden to meet a Shipmate and we had a good girly chat about flooded basements, plumbers etc. As if I didn’t get enough about plumbing in my day job as a plumber’s spouse…

Talking of which, things are looking good for said plumber to bag a job at a  Further  Education College, teaching mechanical engineering. This would be a considerable change in our daily lives but he has really had enough of crawling under sinks now. Especially since he hit a magical birthday this year (half-century, in case you’re interested).

*or, in the terms of the anagrammatical Tube map (see Wibsite home page for sample), ‘Internal Puke’.

‘WANTED; HAMSTER BITS’. Mmmm… tasty.