A lovely day yesterday with my brother and his family. We went for a walk across the fields and saw in the distance the windmill where Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was filmed, and drove through a nearby village which was where Cruella De Ville lived in 101 dalmations. Almost as exciting, we learnt the rules for Congestion Scrabble where you try and use as few letters as possible in as least space as possible. Can't wait to try that one out. The people in the village my brother lives in are so polite that when I saw some people standing on the doorstep of a house called 'Sarah's Cottage' I went up to them and said over-excitedly that my name was Sarah. 'How nice', they said a bit bemused until they realised I was linking it to the name of their house. They'd thought I'd just been introducing myself.
Today I was sitting in front of the fire today feeling so lethargic I could hardly move when I suddenly thought I didn't want to spend my New Year like this, so I went off to the allotment instead to sort out my raspberry canes. I've entered the heaviest marrow and pumpkin competition in the annual show so I also cleared some ground and spread good thoughts. Whether that's enough, time will tell.
And my writing prompt for today comes from Virginia Woolf's diaries and is a line from her entry of January 3rd, 1933 'This is a little out of place, but then so am I'.
I'm taking comfort from another entry of hers for Tuesday May 11th, 1920. She writes: 'It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I'm a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception. Directly one gets to work one is like a perosn walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. i want to write nothing in this book that I don't enjoy writing. And yet writing is always difficult.'
A site that makes me laugh every time I use it is http://www.thesurrealist.co.uk/sheep - the sheep shift around to make a different poem every time. Do give it a go.
I had such a lovely gift this afternoon - one of those times when you laugh so much you feel weak and all cleared out. And the strangest thing of all was that it was my own humiliation that made me so merry! Close readers of the blog (aren't you all?) will remember my 'baby pumpkin' (thanks Clare); well, today was the day of the great Allotment show and I decided after a sleepless night (really) to put it in no matter what size the other beasts were. I actually felt quite confident by the time I went to pick it for the show; no need for dolls house equipment to make it seem big (thanks Kate). Well, if you have a look at the photograph above, you'll probably guess the big one isn't mine. No, mine is peeping out from behind it, that little yellow thing that looks like a grape. I don't think I need to spell it out that I didn't win, didn't actually come second, no, folks, I was a whole 30kg behind the second smallest pumpkin in the competition.... It was a fabulous show though, more later.
