Like your thought on the algorithms issue. I am a bit like you I think, jack of all trades. I am not going to loose sleep over it though. Had enough of that algorithm lark in higher education! We got our seeds and sets into the raised bed at long last - onions, beetroot, leeks and carrots. Birds are a nightmare though so heavy green netting has been applied. That's the best ever - a customer complaining over a typo 🥺😆
I do so hope your veg remains bird resistant Lucy! I’ll take being a wide-ranging generalist over having a single USP any day I think. Life is too interesting and short to be stuck in a specialist niche.
A lovely piece of writing, as ever, and I was delighted to discover that Robert Graves poem. (Yesterday I went to a lovely talk about 40 years of London Transport's Poems on the Underground, which I want to write about soon.) Very glad to have partaken in the quaffing & feasting last weekend, and If you are ever free to wander over this direction, don't miss a trip to the Manor at Hemingford Grey to see Lucy Boston's amazing patchworks there. Poignant that others are so easily discarded, but good to know that the one you found will have a new, happy purpose in life.
Valerie what a delightful read this is. So many reasons to be cheerful here. Just confirming the lady in the card needs to get back to the sanitarium quick smart. Maybe sit her with the spelling nazi lady.
Re. Robert Graves, I adored I, Claudius, both the novel and the BBC series as a teenager (I was quite precocious, and my parents weren’t, in retrospect, strict enough), but I re-watched it a couple of years ago and saw it in a rather different, far better-informed light, especially because I read Joan Smith’s excellent, if harrowing, Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac (yes, that’s the title), in which she demolished the ancient misogynistic myths that Graves did much to perpetuate in the 20th century. Of course, when Graves wrote the novel, he was desperate to make money, so made it as salacious as possible, hoping it’d sell, and he was right.
I, too, sometimes rescue quilts, although my MS is eroding my ability to handle large pieces anymore. I often marvel at the hand-knitted items I find in thrift stores, too.
I thoroughly agree with your suggestion that Substack create a category for magpies like us, who write about all manner of things, skipping from one topic to another. I think there may be a better word that miscellaneous, but that would do.
Like your thought on the algorithms issue. I am a bit like you I think, jack of all trades. I am not going to loose sleep over it though. Had enough of that algorithm lark in higher education! We got our seeds and sets into the raised bed at long last - onions, beetroot, leeks and carrots. Birds are a nightmare though so heavy green netting has been applied. That's the best ever - a customer complaining over a typo 🥺😆
I do so hope your veg remains bird resistant Lucy! I’ll take being a wide-ranging generalist over having a single USP any day I think. Life is too interesting and short to be stuck in a specialist niche.
Totally agree 👍
I find the idea of secondhand, mended quilts really beautiful; A garment with memory getting a new lease on life!
Absolutely. Such a shame when that painstaking work is abandoned.
I think the coy miss with the roses has just seen something beastly in the buddleia...
Ha ha!
A lovely piece of writing, as ever, and I was delighted to discover that Robert Graves poem. (Yesterday I went to a lovely talk about 40 years of London Transport's Poems on the Underground, which I want to write about soon.) Very glad to have partaken in the quaffing & feasting last weekend, and If you are ever free to wander over this direction, don't miss a trip to the Manor at Hemingford Grey to see Lucy Boston's amazing patchworks there. Poignant that others are so easily discarded, but good to know that the one you found will have a new, happy purpose in life.
Valerie what a delightful read this is. So many reasons to be cheerful here. Just confirming the lady in the card needs to get back to the sanitarium quick smart. Maybe sit her with the spelling nazi lady.
She does look a little deranged, like a bad Monday morning.
Probably high on opium Valerie.
Keep an eye on your bets - we were gutted to find a dead sparrow trapped in ours
Sound advice. That sounds terrible.
Nets!
That’s a pretty quilt.
Your veg patch looks great, and so does that beautiful bird. And yes she looks a little freaky ahah
Loved the poem – never seen it before, and loved the quilt too.
Your meandering through places and subjects is what makes your posts lovely and fun. Keep on keeping on!
Thanks Amela. I do enjoy not knowing what will tickle my fancy in any given week.
The best!
I've recently developed a taste for French poisson d'avril cards from the same period - similarly strange!
I will keep a look out. The bookshop sometimes gets donations of postcard collections which contain all manner of weird and wonderful things.
Magpie Meanderers Unite!
Re. Robert Graves, I adored I, Claudius, both the novel and the BBC series as a teenager (I was quite precocious, and my parents weren’t, in retrospect, strict enough), but I re-watched it a couple of years ago and saw it in a rather different, far better-informed light, especially because I read Joan Smith’s excellent, if harrowing, Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac (yes, that’s the title), in which she demolished the ancient misogynistic myths that Graves did much to perpetuate in the 20th century. Of course, when Graves wrote the novel, he was desperate to make money, so made it as salacious as possible, hoping it’d sell, and he was right.
I, too, sometimes rescue quilts, although my MS is eroding my ability to handle large pieces anymore. I often marvel at the hand-knitted items I find in thrift stores, too.
I thoroughly agree with your suggestion that Substack create a category for magpies like us, who write about all manner of things, skipping from one topic to another. I think there may be a better word that miscellaneous, but that would do.
And the photos are gorgeous!
How about miscellany? As a catagory.