Oct 1st, 2008

Texting and babies

Something that made me think and made me sad. Walking home, a young woman came towards me. One hand steered an expensive baby buggy, the other held a mobile phone.  She was reading a text and laughing.  She then began to write her reply, her thumb dancing over the phone keys.  What saddened me was that her baby (aged around six months, I’d guess) was coo-ing and smiling, one arm stretched towards her – and she didn’t see it.

It set me thinking about mothers and babies in today’s world.  I’ve seen many girls text or talk on their mobiles while pushing prams – the modern obsession with keeping in touch, with everyone, all the time.

Now I know that a baby is damned (more…)

Sep 30th, 2008

Quotidian pleasures

I learned the word quotidian only recently and have been using it with great glee ever since.  I use it rather loosely here, because I mean the everyday, commonplace pleasures that we often let slip through our fingers without cherishing them or rejoicing in them.

Today’s batch might include:

- the mass of tiny bubbles surrounding a boiled egg just before the water erupts, boiling, into larger bubbles. The pattern is completely uniform around the whole egg (more…)

Sep 30th, 2008

Recipe for tablet

I was rooting around looking for the scraps of paper on which were written some of my mother’s cake recipes.  I found this, written by my mum’s neighbour.  She made the best tablet in the world and was an extraordinary wee woman.  If you want instant bliss and the risk of rotting teeth, make this – I promise you that none of it will remain uneaten by the end of the day.  Oddly, she calls it Swiss Milk Tablet – I don’t know what the Swiss connection (more…)

Sep 30th, 2008

Symmetry

I’m watching these three pigeons atop a nearby roof, silhouetted against a beautiful blue sky with tufts of cloud and I’m thinking ‘look at that symmetry’.  Each bird is perfectly spaced and I’m reminded of the marking of soldiers on parade.  I know, of course, that there will be a reason for that symmetry – perhaps the pigeons instinctively leave a wing’s width between them, so that takeoff isn’t jeopardised.  Nonetheless, it’s fascinating. The laws of Nature are, I believe, highly mathematical and maths is a subject that makes my head spin.  But I don’t really need to know why there’s all this symmetry around, I just love that there is.

Anyone with a photographic eye is, of course, always looking for it (the rule of thirds is the ultimate example).

It was probably some ancient mathematician (more…)

Sep 29th, 2008

Autumn falls

As we say here, “the nights are drawing in”.

Indian Summer might be what we’re calling these dry, sunny days, but that’s only because the real summer has been so unrelievedly dreich. We want to hold back winter for a little longer if we can and lift our faces to the sun.

Autumn is one of my favourite times of year. When I put my nose out the door this morning (pre-coffee and barefoot still) the air was cool and I swear it smelled of the changing season. Later, I brought home some chrysanthemums in shades of burnt orange and gold. They’re only supermarket blooms (the junk food of the floral world) but not even mass production can totally obliterate that spicy autumn scent.

I’m taken back to the Harvest Festivals (more…)

Sep 29th, 2008

The comfort of books

Although I occasionally tackle a weighty tome, these days I’m more likely to read comfortable books.  Comfortable is an unfashionable word isn’t it? It suggests old lady slippers and saggy woollens. And badly written pulp fiction. But that’s not what I mean at all.  I mean the kind of book that draws you in to its own little world and while doing so, reaches into your heart.  It’s intelligently written but not too demanding. A book that finds it way to the top of the reading pile time after time while the worthy biography of Gunter Grass slips unread to the bottom.

Books have always been a comfort and a joy for me. I was given my first library ticket when I was five and read everything in sight during a childhood which could otherwise have been rather lonely. I owe my early passion for books (more…)