Last Night of the Proms weather updates

I am shockingly behind with weather events, of which there have been several.

The Last Night of The Proms style Thunderstorm immediately comes to mind. Very dramatic thunder and lightning, which myself and the small male (who’s taller than me now) delighted in. We love storms because we speculate the power will go out (it rarely does) and if we’re truly speculative we make flasks of water and boil the kettle. Once we even purchased storm friendly sushi! The Last Night of The Proms thunder event was followed by the Last Night of Proms monsoon rain event. Fantastic — have not seen monsoon rain like that since nearly 20 years ago in a monsoon rain event in Jakarta. It was so thrilling I may have to bring forward my plan to have the Japanese weather symbols tattooed upon me. I need my own personal forecast and thunder and rain seem apt.

Overall we are in a wonderful batch of long hot days that make for working outside and eating truckloads of blueberries and cherries.

I am hoping to build a balcony garden, gardening at the community garden (nothing hectic to report, except peas — this year I am merely gardening to make the bees happy),

Summer is wonderful. Amen.

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Tripping over Anne Carson, deliberating on comfort

Today I was searching for another interview and tripped over this Anne Carson interview on Writers and Company. I loved her book Nox. The tactile unfolding, fragments and collage and what it intended. During the interview she tells a story about a teacher who taught her Latin at lunch time in school, whom she subsequently learnt took off to a farm and became a hermit. It reminded me of the single or individual teachers in life who impact us and how important that impact can be. I particularly enjoyed her tale because it reminded me of a wonderful, eccentric French teacher I had, who was very encouraging and supportive of my desire to create odd, effusive sentences in a language I could barely mutter where’s the park, Jean-Paul is sitting by the side of a lake and can I have a raspberry ice-cream in. When it came to writing she would smile at my requests for vocabulary or attempts to add details and delight in them. Strangely in hindsight many of my vocabulary requests concerned the weather!

I must read more of Anne Carson’s work as I am only familiar with a small amount of it.

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I drank a cup of Lea Valley Tools tea today and it was very acceptable. The tin of tea was a present from a much loved friend several years ago and I’ve admired the tin, but never religiously engaged with its contents. That will change! It was a particular taste I was looking for and needed to cure a headache from today’s low clouds. And the green tin delivered. Later in the evening thinking maybe it could be a hint, I took up the tools catalogue for a bit of comfort reading.

I’ve been thinking a lot about comfort and how and where we go for it, or how and where it may be right there beside us. I think possibly because yesterday my partner’s brother gave me the most incredible food to eat that he had prepared and I was very taken by the near musical notes in its taste. Also, because our winter and spring have been strangely colder than usual we are still clutching blankets and putting on scarves, which brings me again to the consolation of comfort.