beauty in everyday life

I recently bought this new water bottle. (It's a V&A Museum product that I bought at my local garden centre.) I think its beautiful print will help me to carry it everywhere and use it consistently. Isn't the print lovely? It's a historic wallpaper design. It was designed by a man named William Morris in 1884. He said "Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." This is also my Mum's philosophy--she is an expert at filling her house with beautiful and useful items. I have lots of her photos in our home--beautiful pictures of flowers, especially.

This week Mum and Dad have been staying with us and Mum helped me totally spring clean my kitchen and improve it. So I hope to post again later about my new item of kitchen furniture and the reorganisation of my cupboards. I also got new plates and napkins--ooh, the excitement!

an ode to Helen

Your birthday was a memorable meal.
You helped me with my weeding.
You share seedlings with me.
And you like to eat my food.
Thanks for washing up afterwards.
You inspire me to be more green.
You like to talk about God with us.
You are also hilarious!

looking around

things I am looking forward to:
Mum and Dad are coming to visit.
I get to see Jayme and Maya and Donald soon.
Hopefully everything will go well at exam season and I can put on my proud teacher smile.
The salad in the big green box is almost ready to be harvested.
There is a small chance I will be able to grow several vegetables successfully this year.
Monday is bank holiday and Ant and I can practise our German together.
The older you get the more you learn.
There are so many good books waiting to be read.
A quiet afternoon means my brain can rest and meander.

things I am glad are now in the past:
The stress of the last few weeks has been grinding me down.
Ant did all the washing up today.
The dark and cold weather is over now (mostly, in theory).
Being an adult with a good job means I am no longer living hand-to-mouth.
My thirtieth birthday is long gone (since I have been inflating my age by five years since I started teaching).

germinating

One small success! I planted twelve courgette seeds in this egg carton and all twelve have germinated! I need to keep them inside until they have five or six leaves then they get a few nights outside before finally being planted.

Last weekend I also planted carrot and beetroot seeds outside. My salad box has started growing and there are radish leaves up. (I hope I will also get some radishes this year.) Stand by for more news! I am hoping that I will grow a green thumb this year as well.

Easter and the rest of life

A bit of a more comprehensive update today!

Spring has well and truly arrived--woohoo! Last Sunday Ant and I hosted a big Easter lunch and afterwards the boys went to play snooker round the corner and Pari and I took a nice walk around the neighbourhood. This is a picture of a magnolia tree in one of the front gardens on a street nearby. So beautiful! There are other trees also blossoming at the moment. When we eventually own a house I desperately want to have a magnolia tree.


I have spent my Easter holiday doing quite a lot of work related things. I went to work for two full days of revision sessions and also for one and a half days of my own work. But I feel relaxed and more organised.

Yesterday after lunch I went into the city and headed for Sir John Soane's Museum. It is a little gem of a museum--it's the private house of John Soane (1753-1837), an architect who collected everything realted to architecture and design. It's full of busts, statues, parts of columns, decorative stonework,and so on. I wasn't able to take any photos inside, but you can see some of it on the website.


I visited there for the first time last month and took this photo. Today I saw all the things I didn't have time for before, and afterwards went to a cafe around the corner for a bowl of soup and a pot of green tea. (I was also reading maths education articles and making notes!)


After my little lunch I headed to the nearby British Museum. I have been there lots of times but always find something new to see. Today I visited the India rooms and then went up to the far back corner for a special exhibition about intimate portraits. The smaller drawings and pastels were fascinating. I liked that the expressions of the sitters were often very frank. Unlike larger oil paintings, designed to flatter and impose, these were smaller sketches which generally showed affection. Here are two of my favourites.

summer, or is it winter?

Ant and I booked our summer holiday--to Australia! We are so excited to have taken the plunge. We are not terribly looking forward to the 23 hour plane journey to get there! It will be great to see Micah and Anna, though, and a few other friends that live in Sydney. And also we will stop off for a day and a half in Hong Kong on the way home.

Ant is excited that it will be winter there so he will get some respite from the heat here. Hmpf.

Wales

I have been in Swansea, South Wales for four days this week at a conference for maths teachers. Don't laugh! It was a really fantastic time and I feel much more inspired to be a good teacher and try to do new things that help expose the mathematics I am trying to teach and to help children mathematise.

Amazingly, there were four teachers from Nova Scotia at the conference and it turned out that one of them is a girl with whom I went to high school! There was a good mixture of researchers and teachers at the conference and the sessions were run by all types of folks. The sessions were really valuable, but also beneficial were all the meal times and coffee breaks when I talked with people. Since I went on my own, I said hello to anyone who made eye contact with me and ended up meeting lots of interesting people with lots of interesting ideas. All of this really made me want to be a more reflective teacher.

It was my first-ish* time in Wales, and it was interesting to see the bilingual signs. Sometimes the Welsh looked like an anagram of the English. The Welsh have a lovely lilting accent when talking in English, but sometimes is was a bit hard to underatnd what I was being told.

The University was across the road from a beach that looked out over the sea--my first view of the sea in some time. I enjoyed a windy walk along the beach, tugging my suitcase, as I headed to the train station at the end of the conference.


________________________
* I have been to Wales once before, but only for an afternoon. It was while my family were travelling in England and my Dad and I stopped in Hay to visit the many bookshops.

growing

I'm going to have another crack at gardening this spring. Our back yard is split into two sections: the right half is ours and the left side is our neighbours. We have a small paved area and a little section of raised beds. I was only minimally successful growing in containers last year but I am determined to have another try.

Last weekend Helen, and later Pari, came over and gave me the kind of advice I needed to hear, "Just go for it. Rip out the things you don't want and plant something else." Helen and I got down on our knees and pulled up all the overgrown things that were crowding out our small back garden and we chopped back a couple of trees (or large shrubs?) that hang over into our garden. We bagged up all the garden waste and then planted a few potatoes that had been sprouting in the pantry.

Today I was out at the shops and found out that our local pound shop sells garden items! I started to pick out a few things and got chatting to a couple of nice ladies who were also perusing the items. One said, "I buy the flowers here every year and they always come up beautifully!" Another said, "Oh, dear, you must buy freesias, because they smell the best." So I started picking up loads of things, as you can see! I got some fruit bushes: redcurrant, gooseberry, tayberry, blueberry; and a shrub called escallonia, which has lovely red flowers on the box, and I bought freesia and iris bulbs as well as lily of the valley, columbine, stone crop (small pink flowers), and lupins.


Well! Hopefully some or even all of these will grow in my little patch of dirt and also in the containers. I still want to get lots of vegetables as well.... I'm not sure if I have space for all of this! But I figure some of it might die and some of it might grow.

tourist destination

I was in the tube station a week ago and did a double take when I saw familiar words in an unexpected place. It turns out that New Brunswick is advertising in the Underground! New Brunswick! I might imagine that BC or Alberta would advertise here, but, really, NB! It was lovely and surprising to see the shots of NB--who wouldn't want to go on a seven night break to Fredericton? :)

Note that Canadian Affair (the charter airline) is now advertising that it has government backed holiday protection. I suppose this is to counter your association with Canadian budget airlines and bankruptcy, as Ant and I experienced too well this past summer in the Zoom debacle.

paperchase

A new discovery in London! There is a Paperchase flagship store on Tottenham Court Road. When I found this out while I was in the city a few weeks ago I was enraptured with the idea. A massive, beautiful shop, all full of stationery! Pens, pencils, notebooks, dividers, organisers, office supplies of all kinds!... Ah, I was in love from the moment I walked in.

I was on the hunt for a notebook with squared paper inside and I found a huge array. I picked a black, soft cover notebook with 200 pages. I also bought some purple marking pens and wanted to buy so much more.

Upstairs there is a coffee shop and a furniture section! I loved these clocks, and think that one would be a great present. I know what to get for the next big event someone has.


It is my plan to visit the Paperchase flagship store every time I am in the area from now on... and buy a nice pen every time!

highlights from Basel

Pari and I had the pleasure of travelling to Basel, Switzerland last weekend. It was so easy to get there and I was amazed by how wonderful a short trip like that could be. I was only there for one night but it was excellent to be away somewhere different. On Saturday we started off by walking around the old town, centred on the Munster, the cathedral built out of beautiful red blocks of local stone. We climbed up right to the top of the bell towers and looked out over the city and the Rhone river.


The church was set out with hundreds of these lovely wooden chairs, with many different patterns on their backs. I was amazed by the beautiful workmanship.


We walked all along the river, though the quaint streets. We visited the Tinguely museum--Jean Tinguely was a sculptor who made moving contraptions, like this fountain outside. All the bits were spinning, or sweeping up and down and water was spraying in every direction. There is also a Tinguely fountain in the centre of town.


Inside the museum this was my favourite piece. When you pressed the button on the floor it animated, with all the different bits playing an instrument--gongs, cymbals, a piano, and so on. It was noisy and celbratory.


On Sunday we were walking around the old town again and suddenly this marching band appeared. We followed them around for a while and found that another band sprung up from a side street.


Over the next several hours, marching bands were walking around everywhere. They were all playing different songs, going up and down in all directions, sometimes several were passing us at once. It was all part of the winding down of the city festival earlier in March.

Canterbury--part two

Pari and I visited Canterbury Cathedral--it's the real reason to travel to Canterbury. And stunning it was too. There was a university choir and orchestra practising when we arrived and that made it even better. They were singing Hayden's Mass in Time of War, although I couldn't make out any of the words.

St Augustine's Abbey was my other main attraction. These tiles are an amazing example of the workmanship that was put into it over hundreds of years and many stages in its life. It is now ruined and what's left of it is a UNESCO world heritage site (along with the Cathedral and one other church).


I thought you might also be amused by this road sign. I'm sure St Augustine is thrilled to be have so many things named after him: an Abbey, an area, and a roundabout!

Canterbury

Pari and I spent the weekend away in Canterbury. It was fantastic!

I am rushing around now to get sorted for work tomorrow so I shall just post two pictures and say more later. The top one shows St Augustine's Abbey and the bottom shows Pari outside the town walls. We walked lots, ate lovely food, and saw the Cathedral and the Abbey and the Roman museum. It was a very relaxing weekend.


Now Ant is back from Switzerland and I am focused on work again. Another busy week begins.

overworked, but content

I had so much marking over the half term break that I had to bring it home from work in two installments. The suitcase was the only way I could get the second half back to work; I couldn't actually lift all the marking I had done! I found it quite funny to return home on the train with my empty suitcase in the evening.

But on a positive note, I have some projects coming up that I am very excited about. I am hoping to do some research about maths A level participation at the school and I'm also taking part in a working research group about trigonometry. So although I am busy, I am enjoying things at work. I wish there was less administration (Matt says I need an adminion) and I could do with less marking. But I am learning and trying new things, which I love.

shrove tuesday

Ant and I had a little pancake picnic after dinner today. I used a recipe I have been saving for several weeks from the NY Times blog, Bitten, by Mark Bittman. They were the tastiest pancakes I have ever eaten. A bit fussy, though, with egg whites to be beaten separately and three dirty bowls in the end. But they were so yummy!

We ate them with fresh lemon juice, whipped cream, and maple syrup. So decadent. I told Ant this was my one big treat this week!

women's breakfast

Last Saturday we had the women's breakfast at church. The food there is always fantastic. We ate eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit, fried plantains, rolls, croissants, etc, etc. Actually I ate a subset of these because there was so much food! After breakfast we were discussing what to wear, and how we pick our clothes and what we and others think of them. We started with a dress up activity in two groups. In the above picture Kathleen is dressed in the new fashion, with a nod to the roaring twenties. Helen is describing it and trying to convince us of how desirable it is. In the shot below, I have been dressed by my team in a tight skirt, bodice, belt, and leggings while Dawn was giving the sales pitch.


The discussion about looking attractive was quite interesting. We were focusing on 1 Timothy 2:9-10 and talking about how we look.

I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.

It was a good, honest discussion with the other church ladies. Judith was telling us that braided hair and gold and pearls were signs of a hooker in Paul's day. So I want to avoid looking trashy. I want to be a more beautiful woman in the way I dress (appropriately) and in the things that I do. I need to clothe myself with love (Colossians 3:14) above all, and a smile for others.

religious studies question

There's a religious studies class that meets in my classroom once a fortnight. When I returned recently I found a handout on the floor that interested me.

Well done! You have now covered enough work to be able to answer a GCSE RS question.

Here is the question: What reasons might a Christian give for the existence of God?

There are at least _____ reasons a Christian might give for the existence of God. Firstly, there is the ____ theory. William _____ said that just like a _____ has to have a designer, so does the earth. The earth must have a creator and that creator was _____.

Secondly we all have a _____ which tells us the difference between right and _____ when we are faced with a _____ dilemma. Christians believe that our conscience is the voice of _____ speaking to us.

Some people believe they have met _____ through religious experiences such as _____ and _____.

Finally many Christians believe in God because this is what they have been _____ up to believe. their family and friends are Christian and so they do not question their belief.


Here are some words to help you (some may be used more than once):
God, four, miracles, brought, Paley, conscience, prayer, watch, moral, wrong

I thought this was interesting because it is a simple answer to the question of the existence of God, written by someone looking in on Christianity from the outside. And I find it to contain some truths. I believe I have met with God through my experiences as well: Jesus has become real to me and someone I talk to day by day. What would you say? What reasons do you give for the existence of God when you are asked?

books I want to read

Here are two food books I want to read at some point. Or maybe I'll start with one of them.

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, Mark Bittman
The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan

Here are some maths books I want to read at some point. They are taken from a list that is given to incoming Oxford maths undergraduates as things they could choose from to read over the summer before they enter the university.

The Music of the Primes, Marcus Du Sautoy
How to Solve It, George Polya
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Paul Hoffman (the story of Paul Erdos, which I think might be in the flat somewhere)
1089 and All That: A Journey into Mathematics, David Acheson

cooking and relaxing

Since we both stayed home from work today, we kept ourselves busy with the internet, books, a movie (Michael Clayton), a bit of TV, some organising, and cooking. I made these zucchini/courgette muffins to eat with tea as we curled up under the duvet on the couch. They were a bit dry and I ate mine with Greek yoghurt.

For supper we had some slow-cooked beef and a coleslaw (recipe from Sarah's gift of How to Cook Everything). Mum and I managed to talk with the webcam again and she used her new headset and did some ironing at the same time while I was filing in the study--very productive for us both and we got to chat about more "random" things. It was more relaxing that some of our busier chats.


I finished my book club book (for February), Then We Came to the End, the first book I have ever read narrated in the first person plural. It's set at work in an advertising agency and I found it a bit depressing from time to time with the ennui and drudgery. And I started a book I picked up at the little second hand book store near the station: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. It's a family story, which is more my style. Our next book club book (for March) is the new Sebold read, The Almost Moon.

snow!

A snow day in London. Who would have thought it? This is the most snow London has had in eighteen years, apparently. As the sun came up we could see that a thick blanket had landed. There are no snow plows here and no winter tires, so London has come to a standstill. The trains are severely disrupted with some lines closed. After about 45 minutes of calling and internet checking I found that school had been cancelled. Now Ant and I are both doing a bit of work (there is always marking to do!) and drinking tea, warm inside with no desire to go out.

Out our back window we can see that there is even snow balanced on next door's washing line. It is very still outside and flakes are falling intermittently.