... and there are still holes in two ceilings and the tiles are still off in the shower room. When I am at my most argumentative I think I might make an ideal insurance company employee. If the job is - as I can only assume it must be - all about finding reasons for not allowing repair work to go ahead, I think I could wrangle and dispute until the customer found another solution. Fortunately, this bloody minded-ness works from the other side also and, now I have at last obtained one of the two required estimates for repair costs, I shall argue that I should be allowed to have the damage put right. A second estimate, I hear you say - have YOU ever tried to get two estimates? One has taken weeks, will I live long enough for a second to materialise? Watch this space...
Linlithgow is grey and cold, and we have just had the annual visit from BT concerning the telegraph pole at the bottom of the garden. Each year a new enthusiast arrives to tell us that BT will just be digging the pole up and replacing it - they never have any information on exactly how they will dig up the tallest pole in West Lothian and then take it out through the close, but they have spoken of digging machinery in the past. Through the close then down stairs, I don't think so. They are then puzzled when I ask whose permission they have to dig up a private garden in the first place - and then they go away and send a new innocent back the following year. I am not going to tell you for how long this nonsense has been happening, but it became boring some years ago. From where BT gets the notion that it rules the world, or at least this little bit of the High Street, I don't know - but I wonder what they would say if it were their garden in question.
Time for the happy pills I think.
And a new year begins ...
Sometimes it takes being able to look back on an event or set of circumstances before the truth becomes clear - looking back on 2010 it strikes me now just how uncomfortable and niggly I had become by the year end, and how pleased I am to have left it behind. I was tired by the end of the Christmas show, and I think I had been tired for quite some time before that. Not necessarily the tired-after-hard-physical-work tired, more a weariness and dis-satisfaction which eats away at the edges, and leaves everything a little fraught and tattered. I needed a rest, and the holiday provided that. We did a whole lot of sitting, reading, walking about, more sitting, and sleeping. It was lovely to return to a place we know well, and to see people we know and appreciate. The four days adventuring we spent in Alleppey and Cochin were also laid back and restful - even the journey too and from Fort Cochi on local buses and rickshaws was an adventure and fun. The dash through a traffic jam to bang on the doors of an already packed bus, to be squeezed inside and stand amidst many others, was an experience!
And we caught up with Sam again. We had a quiet dinner at the Rockholm, and, on the Sunday, he borrowed a friends car and showed us around Trivandrum before driving up into the national park, the Western Ghats, to a small hill station called Ponmudi. 22 hairpin bends and no houses. A couple of hill tribe shrines were glowing by the roadside, their bells and cymbals sounding strongly in the clear, still air. There was a parking place, and a short walk to the top of a small rocky mound - then all around, for a full 360 degrees, was forest clad hill top upon forest clad hilltop upon further hilltop. The landscape of fairytale and fantasy, blue peak behind blue peak, the shades of colour varying slightly with the cloud shadow and the angle of the sun. It really was like being on the top of the world. The name, Ponmudi, means golden peak - the angle of the suns rays at sunset fall upon the long stems of the dry glasses and turn them to burnished gold. Earlier in the day we had visited the Kallar Waterfall, a kilometre walk along a hilly, rock path right into the forest - opening out into a clearing into which a powerful wall of water thunders. To get there, the slip on leather sandals we were wearing were not ideal, but we did it. Boardman had a crisis of confidence crossing the broad steam which led away from the waterfall. A simple paddle really, not needing anything more than basic care and attention - and I sat down in the middle. Heigh ho - it was warm and I dried out in no time.
Since coming home - the journey was longer than ideal, as there were some 17 hours in Dubai - we have installed the new exhibition and are now getting used to the realities of a tory/lib-dem UK once again! Elisabet is suffering from the 'flu, or a bad cold, and feels that life could be better, and I am trying to reconcile myself to the length of time it takes the OU to mark a 2200 word submission. Currently we are approaching the 500 words a week mark, and I am about to give up. Patience may be a virtue, but it is one that can be taken advantage of!
Flux - and beyond
Well, this has been the season of delight and joy, hasn't it? All that lovely snow and picturesque whiteness, the frosty mornings and the icicles in the hedgerows, hanging from the guttering and just about everything else. And all of those unexpected waterfalls when the thaw came and the pipes celebrated by splitting so very thoroughly .....
BUT tomorrow will be the first day of January 2011, the first day of a new year, and all that has gone before will be wiped clean and we start anew. I will take time now to gloat and to tell you that we will be leaving about 1pm on an aeroplane for sunnier climes, and that forgetting all about the cold will be a little easier for us that it will be for many. I am, however, being serious when I suggest that we should all take a deep breath, have a lie in - and start afresh. No matter how one sees it, there is a significance about the first page in a new calendar, the first space in a new diary and planner. The previous set are hidden and we are confronted with an expanse of blanks and an array of things 'to be done'. I have all sorts of notions for new things I want to try out to fill some of those spaces - but I hesitate to commit anything to this blog, so I shall have to report back if and when I succeed in anything!
On a more serious note, 2010 has not been a year on which I shall look back fondly. There have been many good things, and each I will remember in its own right. But there have been sadnesses and troubles for many friends and people dear to us in 2010, and I will be glad to move on and leave as much as possible behind. 2011 will be a year of sorting things out, putting things right and all manner of fixing yet other things to somewhere nearer my satisfaction! So there.
And now, at the end of this complicated year I have to make sure the opening show of 2011 is as well prepared for as I can, make sure I have sent payment to as many artists as I can, clear the gallery and paint the walls ready for the fresh start I seem to be insisting upon. Oh - and pack and get ready for an early start for the airport.
So - to all of those who read this thing, Elisabet and I would like to wish you a very peaceful and happy 2011.
December 12
Given all of the dreadful weather we have all been experiencing
in the last weeks, and the upset it will have caused for everyone, we
thought it might be an idea to tell a bit more about what we have to
offer here at The Line - we hope to bring a little cheer!
We are delighted to have new work by Laura Hudson in the current
exhibition - The Sixteenth Angel* - summery paintings of pears and
olives, beans and figs from her home in the centre of France. The
warmth of the sun glows from the canvas - see the images attached.
The last weeks or two has brought out the best, and sometimes the not
quite so 'best', from people all around. Neighbours and complete strangers
have stopped to help dig out cars and clear pavements, teas and coffees have
been supplied to 'the workers' with all good humour, dangerous icicles
and threatening snowy overhangs have been marked for all to see. Odd
and thoughtless abandoning of cars has been a bit of a pain, but the
thaw has seen the end of that, for now at least.
So - come and warm yourself in the glow from Laura's painting, and
receive a warm welcome whenever you feel inclined. We will be
pleased to see you
Gail and Elisabet
* to answer a question we have been asked several times - we always
have an 'angel' in the title of the Christmas exhibition, and this our 16th
Christmas show. We simply could not think of an appropriate title in
time!
