This week my wife’s book The Cut Flower Patch, won the Garden Media Guild’s: Best Practical Book of the Year. I’m so pleased for her. She put in so much work and produced a beautiful book. I have always been proud of her, so it seems funny to say that I am proud of her, but you know what I mean. I’m sure most of you already have a copy, but if you haven’t at least now you can now take the experts word for it, not just mine….
Please do take a look at it. It would make a great Christmas present for anyone who likes nature, gardens, flowers or even just beautiful photos.
And if you do already have a copy, I’d love it if you told all your friends about it! 😉
Here is a video of me playing Giorni Dispari. Which is Italian for Odd Days.
It’s quite an apt title at the moment. We are awaiting news on my request to become a homeworker. My company is moving offices next year, this coincides with us wanting to move house anyway. If I get homeworker status then the radius around the office that we can live expands considerably, compared to if I have to go in most days. I think my chances of getting it are less than even, but if they don’t then I’ll be thinking very long and hard about staying with them. If we move house to be nearer to the new office then we are effectively committing to be there for another 6 years, (buying and selling houses is not a cheap exercise). Whereas if I get homeworker status, we can decide where we want to live based on other criteria than how we can avoid a bad commute.
Another reason that the days seem ‘odd’ at the moment is that I am into the final year of my OU degree. I had a free choice of modules to take and chose geology. It is a level 2 course but the workload is intense, I’d say more so than the level 3 modules I have already done. A part of the problem is that it is all delivered online, which means that instead of being able to read the books downstairs on the sofa, I’m stuck upstairs in the study (the wifi doesn’t extend to the lounge and to be honest we like the fact that the lounge is a ‘no computers/no work’ zone). The result of this is that I never seem to have any free time at the moment.
It has meant that piano playing has taken a back seat. Apart from memorizing Giorni Dispari all I have been playing is a bit of To a Wild Rose (MacDowell), which is only a grade 5 piece so is relatively easy for me. But nonetheless a beautiful piece, and another that I plan to memorize.
I will definitely post a video of me playing it, but don’t expect to see that before Christmas. I expect these odd days will continue till the middle of next year….