Sunday, October 19, 2008

how things are on sunday

I woke up at the ridiculously early hour of six o'clock, took some Noctura homoeopathic pills to try and get back to sleep, but it was no good, I was awake and zinging, feeling for one brief moment as though I might leap up, go for a run, clean the house and write up a storm. It's a powerful feeling, but I'm not fooled. At least it wasn't three in the morning, as it has been for the last fortnight or so. I got up, greeted the cat, fed her and unlocked the cat flap. I ate a kiwi fruit, had a bath, covered myself with Haushka rose oil, found Mr. Signs awake so discoursed upon matters arising and then fell back to sleep while he went into the village to get newspapers and milk. Was woken again at eleven by my niece who can use her mobile free of charge at weekends and likes to make use of this.


I cooked a sunday lunch for us - roast lamb and green vegetables, followed by plum crumble which we had with neighbours over the road because one of them had a birthday. Now Mr. Signs is vacuuming the house with the new lightweight Electrolux thing (I also washed up after the meal so don't be thinking I haven't done my bit ok?), I have just taken some pills to stop muscle pains from gathering (it's Sunday, I need the break) and am about to put up a couple of photos from my new Nikon digital camera. Here goes:

This is a typical Signs kitchen table scene, click to enlarge if you wish to appreciate the finer details. You will see the remains of some of the plum crumble in the bowl my neighbour was eating from. She has just gone next door to look at some paintings that Mr. Signs has been doing at his art classes. Next to the bowl is the book we gave to her husband for his birthday: Hammer and Tickle by Ben Lewis, which is a history of communism told through communist jokes - for example:

Q: What is the difference between life in the time of Jesus and life under Stalin?


A: Well, in those days one man suffered for us all, but today we all suffer for one man.



On the white kitchen towel you will see a collection of odd-looking (mainly black) things. The yellow bag in the background is full of them. They are salt liquorice - called Salmiakki in Finland, and they were sent in a parcel to me by a certain lovely person. The yellow bag was much fuller a few days ago than it is now because if you like this sort of thing you just want to keep on eating it.

And now. I am sure there are many useful things I could/should be doing. In fact one of the conversations we had today was all about the many useful things that needed to be done around here to make life at Signs Cottage even more far out than it already is. Like getting a skip and going through every single thing in the loft so as to make room for new stuff (house clutter) that will one day have to be thrown into a skip or given away. Something to think about for next year perhaps. And then of course there is The Writing. Always that. But from long experience I know that it's best to begin that in the morning and now it is almost dark outside, the sky a deep lilac blue, and I just want to go on doing nothing in particular; watching the birds fly south; thinking about the pot of mint tea I will make any moment now; feeling that all manner of things will be well.

(except that for some reason the second photo won't enlarge - I'm still learning about what to do)

8 comments:

trousers said...

Chasse du Pape - my favourite red wine!

I loved the sense of warmth I got from this post.

Kahless said...

I enlarged the photo; why a leaflet of a calendar on the wall rather than the calendar?

Just being nosey ;-)

Your cooking looks scrumptious. Well the plum crumble does. I am making an apple crumble tomorrow to use up the apples from our trees.

Reading the Signs said...

It was a lovely bottle of wine, Trousers - Mr. S had a bit much and went to sleep later in the afternoon. Well it's Sunday, so -

Kahless the leaflet is actually pinned to a cork noticeboard which you can't see here - it just gives times of the different collections they do.

I made the crumble with spelt flour instead of wheat - it was lovely.

Unknown said...

Yum, yum, those crumbs of plum crumble look particularly fine! The wine looks well worth a fair slurp too! A good Sunday lunch, methinks?

Cusp said...

Well the images all look very Marti Parr to me. Maybe need to fiddle about with the saturation if you wnat the real MP look and an exhibition in some trnedy Brighton Gallery.

Our lives sound quite similar --- it was roast chicken here and friends with a 3 years old who was scribbling all over the patio with coloured chalks and then a plum and peach cake I made.

We've even got a cork board with the stuff about recylcling.

Has u bin spyin'on me ???? ;0)

Gold star to us -- we did the skip in September and now there's lots more room in the loft where we can put all the junk that was in the cupboard under the stairs --never actually goes away but just moves round

Reading the Signs said...

Hey Vanilla - it was a toss-up between the crumble and plain old stewed plums (bearing in mind the low carb thing) - but crumble won out because we didn't have any vanilla - which would have made the stewed plums special.

Cusp, hang on a minute there - perhaps it's you who has been spying on me. Or - or - gawd, Cusp, perhaps we were cloned or something and are essentially the same person. Now look, this is just spooky. Moving the clutter around, yes. It's what we must have been *programmed* to do.

Had to look up Marti Parr. I see he's produced a book called Signs of the Times! I must investigate this.

Collin Kelley said...

I was also up early on Sunday (had to take a houseguest to the airport) and planned to come back to the flat and go to sleep, but no such luck. I was up doing laundry, reorganizing book shelves, etc. But the writing never came. Great post. As trousers said, it was very warm and cozy.

Reading the Signs said...

Hello Collin, there is just something so wrong about waking early on a Sunday. But at least I went back to sleep. It sounds as though you had a useful day. Guess what? After the Poison has arrived. It will live next to Slow to Burn when I have finished reading it.