I had all kinds of walking and photographing planned for today, this Sunday of my birthday and so the kind of day that asks to be celebrated. Which in the event it has been, but not by very much going outside.
I did get out early on to buy some bread but on the way home I heard myself thinking:
“Do you know what, I’d really like to spend the day sat still reading that book?
So I have. ‘That book’ being Nuala O’Faolain’s “Are You Somebody” that I started on yesterday’s walk.
And a perfect day it’s been. Sat in the front room or here in the back where I’m writing this. Laughing and arguing out loud with the book in a way that might have caused concern were there anyone else here. But there isn’t as Sarah’s away on her first sea kayaking weekend of the year.
In a way though Sarah is here, because there are tulips. Also the first of the year. A small bunch in the living room and a bigger one back here. And tulips are ‘Sarah’ flowers.
All the time I’ve known her tulips have followed us around. In the house as soon as they appear in the shops, grown on her allotment and once we even went to a Tulip Show over in Wakefield, where some people are even crazier about tulips than Sarah is. Each prize tulip individually displayed in its own beer bottle.
She’s always drawn and painted them too, one of her large oil paintings hanging next to me back here where I mostly write. And in this painting the tulips are at Sarah’s favourite flopping slightly and opening up stage:
“Doing that tulip thing” she calls it
Which as it happens is also the stage the jug of real tulips on the table here have reached too. These real red ones being almost the same as the red tulips with black middles in Sarah’s painting.
So the tulips and the painting, my companions on this reading day, pretty much asked to be photographed together.
And, stepping back so you can see the highly sophisticated studio set-up here:
That’s it then. Tulips interlude over, I’ll get back to reading!
Tulips in *January?* Grown outside???
No, definitely not.
Ronnie, I’m a day late but I did want to wish you a very happy birthday and to say thank you for creating you. I think your blog posts get more interesting each day. I especially like the new thinking direction that your course is taking you. And I loved the video in the last post too. Very best wishes for the year ahead and for taking me on the ride through your writing.
Thank you Sally and glad you liked the Mary Chapin Carpenter film. The song is beautiful in a very different way, played with brilliant musicians on her album. But on this film, I think she expresses so much and so clearly that she inspires me every time I’ve watched it.
And yes I’m loving the university learning, most of it. The challenges and the stretching are good for me, I think. So thanks for being on the ride, from all the way over on the other side of the planet.
Oh and you’re not a day late! Though it’s Monday morning in Australia it’s still my birthday up here in Northern Britain.