Saturday, February 18, 2012

18th February

Let’s keep busy, let’s keep busy, let’s keep busy! No problem today, It’s been full on since answering my front door just as I was about to start breakfast. No time to think about things; just allowing the flow of activity to carry me along. And I feel all right as well, as it’s been rather satisfying entertaining visitors and then doing my good deed for the day. Yes I was brought up as a good Boy Scout trying to do one every day. Of course it was a late breakfast as I like to sort out the cat and tidy up the kitchen before settling down to eat. Yes, let’s open a window and even light a fragrant candle… why not feel comfortable at breakfast? My eldest turned up for her normal Saturday morning visit and that was nice. I managed to make her cry though as the conversation turned to her mum and we ended up going through some of Jane’s stuff. How can a hairdryer and straighteners cause tears? If I’d simply fetched them to give her, it probably would have been easier; but we ended up working our way through Jane’s wardrobe and drawers together. It’s not that easy looking at everything Jane wore together with other personal possessions for the first time in a long while. It was harder for my daughter of course as I been living with this stuff everyday, albeit shut away in the wardrobe. It doesn’t affect me anything like as much as a few months ago so that’s encouraging.

Anyway I’m short of a few scarves and some other stuff, like my daughter’s mostly unused birthday present for Jane last year... a selection of cosmetics that I would never understand and have no use for anyway. I certainly don’t feel attached to much of Jane’s possessions and will dispose of it in one way or another sometime. Just not yet. I plan on keeping her wedding and engagement rings and a bracelet she’d worn for years but apart from that I’m happy to share. I’ve always enjoyed her artwork so that’ll find a place in this bachelor pad of mine and now I think of it it’s about time to have a painting swap around. Any practising artist produces masses of work and Jane was no exception. She produced quite varied work with suggestions of any number of recognised artists as inspiration. So do I fancy a Rousseau and remember Jane’s leanings towards Naivety; or Picasso and experiments with Cubism; she excelled in drawing with the always Romantic Renoir in mind; Rothko has hung in rooms he never could have imagined as has Degas. Yes a wonderful sketch of the Degas Dancer sculpture would look good. Then over a couple of days she methodically reproduced a whole set of his Bathers series in pastels. But her favourite class at Uni was the Tuesday evening Life Class and she enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere as much as the art work. I can’t quite work out what to do with a whole selection of nude drawings though, and not all as modest as the one above…

So back to my good deed, which more accurately was a joint effort with my son; between us we managed to put together a very usable computer system for my eldest daughter who was living with an ancient machine which needed a serious upgrade. My son had the bulk of what was necessary, discarded after rebuilding his own computer. He always ‘needs’ a top of the range gaming desktop. And now my daughter can do just about anything quite efficiently apart from play the more recent pc games. No problem!

Galatians 6:9 ‘So let’s not get tired of doing what is good’ (NLT)

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