Iceland, flying

The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship - and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens...

... How we would admire planes if they were no longer there to frighten and bore us. We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth.

We would admire them like small boys do, and adults no longer dare, for fear of seeming uncynical and unvigilant towards their crimes against our world.

From A world without planes, by Alain de Botton, written at the time of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in 2010.

~

Flying is of course awful, fraught with difficulty these days: an hour or so in the air entailing a whole day of negotiation, the endless security checks with fractious airline staff, the waiting, the boredom, the bad air and the germs (I caught a cold at the beginning of this trip and Tom had it by the time we got home), the lousy seating, tasteless corporate colour schemes, overpriced food and services etc etc. Then there's the guilt about the evil to the environment, the dark forebodings at the sight of con trails, etc etc.

Yet for all this, my wonder at air travel is never spent. Perhaps because  I haven't done so much of it, I still feel the elation at take off, the frisson of dread on touchdown, I like to be in the sun above the clouds and I still reach for the camera and try to capture the wonder of views from the air, even though it makes me look deeply uncool and far from nonchalant. 

On the journey from Dinard to Stansted, the plane was late and took a slightly different route from usual, I think, which took us directly and visibly over Mont St Michel, showing its iconic profile, and the extent of its marvellous marbled sands, the silver and marl of the reclaimed farmland behind it and the long reach of the Couesnon estuary as we travelled away up the Cherbourg peninsular past Granville:

A couple of days later, we left Stansted under overcast skies, and settled down to what I consider a proper length flight, nearly three hours against the scant fifty minutes between Brittany and Essex, long enough to enjoy, well almost, an in-flight sandwich and a drink. I imagined we would simply descend into an unintelligible landmass perhaps with some runways, roads, and buildings visible, but was delighted to see Iceland clearly taking shape as we skirted its coast, all snow rocky volcanic outcrops and black beaches and empty shoreline and beguilingly alien. 

Even Keflavik airport, when it became clear, had the feeling of a wild outpost 

an impression only somewhat dissolved on landing and being greeted in the terminal by grown men dressed as elves or trolls or something, as well as chic boutiques filled with delicious pullovers.

The refrain of how lucky we were with the weather will be a constant one I think. We had more good views of the country as we left a few days later too, in the sunrise that might have been sunset, since it was always pretty much one and the same.

The steam rising in the picture above came from the Blue Lagoon, which may be the subject of the next post.

Home again

Well, we've been back from Iceland five days, having spent a couple of days in between with my lovely sister, niece and sparkly nephew-out-law, and our house sitters have just this morning left.

Peggie, Sidney and Millie waiting to go

They provided us not only with that service, and lifts to and from the airport, and canine cuddles for the dog-deprived, but also, as ever, overwhelmed us with all kinds of generosity too abundant to list in detail, from the piles of delicious food, such as this Christmas cake:

Yes, those marzipan plums do look rather suggestive

 to these floral beauties just opening as we arrived home, and now filling the entire space with their luxuriant perfume:

to gifts of stunning art pottery, a passion of theirs which they can't resist sharing:

mince pies and hot chocolate in salt glazed mugs for supper tonight

Also, dismayed at our culinary shabbiness and with typical practical thoughtfulness, a new oven seal ordered on-line so we can actually use our proper oven for Christmas dinner rather than managing with the table top one until we get around to buying a whole new cooker.


So now, having had a couple of weeks filled with gorgeous gifts - pools of steaming blue water, swirls and ribbons of light, rides in the snow, walks on the ice, ravishing crystalline cold and wonderful human and animal warmth - the approach of actual Christmas threatens to be something of an anti-climax, and I find it is almost upon me with little time left to buy stamps, write cards, catch posts, put up decos etc etc and generally do all the things accomplished effortlessly by people with far more demanding demands on them than travelling to fabulous places and being looked after and spoiled by kind family and friends. So if we owe you a card and it's a no-show please forgive, but know you are surely in our hearts*.

However, I am looking forward to taking some time now to go over the enormous number of pictures from the trip, getting rid of the many blurry and duplicate ones, and sharing them here or elsewhere, as well as searching for the perfect Icelandic yoke jumper pattern to best show off the really very cheap Lett Lopi wool I got at the Handknitting Association of Iceland shop and had posted on since there was no way I could fit it all in budget airline hand luggage and maybe even knitting it, or indeed just eating our way through a small fraction of the delicious food left by our house sitters.

So, more anon.

~

*Though of course much of the essence of the votive pieces of printed cardboard exchanged at the Feast of the Mutual Obligation is that they exist to placate the spirits of connection and acquaintance so old and atrophied that there is usually no possibility of reaching their recipients by the normal means of communication practised and followed by actual, still active friends and loved ones. In other words, if you read here you're not likely to miss getting a Christmas card and draw the conclusion that we're probably dead. I know, I snark about it every year, without justification or good grace.

We're going away now, we may be gone for some time...

My new bargain padded ski-jacket purchased for Iceland promises this:

I hope they're right. We also hope Reykjavik will look like this:

and not like this:

Alternate realities of the situation both according to the Iceland Monitor, which is threatening hurricane force snow laden winds tomorrow. Let's hope they've passed through by Wednesday. Keflavik airport all seems to be functioning regardless, according to their website.

Peggy, Sidney and Milly will be looking after the house for us, with their human companions. They nearly didn't get here either, since their ferry was cancelled and the next one postponed, and then the crossing was rough, but everybody appears to have weathered the crossing with no worse bodily expulsions than the evidence of a drop of wee in the vicinity of the driver's seat from Sidney; how he adopted the position required for this is a mystery, it seems. But they are all on the road heading this way now.

I'll be on-line only sporadically for the next week or so. Wish us luck in the frozen north.

End of November, just gone

Well, I did it more or less, only skipped about three times, including yesterday, I don't feel any kind of failure about that, since the old days of having to keep up with the challenge to the letter are past. Truly, while now and then I might have felt disinclined, mostly when I got writing and posting I found myself enjoying it, and in fact it's been great. I've so much appreciated renewing the friendship with blogging and blogging friends. I've got used to posting photos as I take them, and using the storage and editing tools available on the notebook or on-line, and to just sitting down and writing, even when it might seem there was nothing much, or at times this month, too much that was too weighty, to write about. I've use this analogy before, I know, but friends are no less dear and important for the fact that, with time and familiarity, you no longer sit up all night smoking and drinking and discussing the meaning of life in earnest tones, but just stop by from time to time for a cup of tea and an idle chat about nothing in particular. I've treasured all your cheerful responses about such nonsense as Yorkshire pudding, socks and whether you prefer dark or milk, as much as I've been cheered and encouraged and comforted by being able to come here and share worries and woes, whether about the care of a troubled young dog or terrible world events, and by the wonderful wisdom and support I can always find with people here. 

So, my heartfelt and affectionate thanks, and long live the blog. Here's a collage round-up of the month's posts, made with the iPiccy on-line editor, which is rather fun when you get used to it. So much change in thirty days.

Wrong kind of chocolate and other gripes, and talking my miserable ingrate self out of them

Slightly irked in spite of myself about doing stuff for other people. I guess I must be fairly grudging about giving of myself and my time, or money come to that, and the less I have to do with other people the meaner I seem to get. Looking after Bram felt like a significant expenditure of time, energy and worry, and a saving of kennel fees for E (I don't think that was an option anyway, it was too late to book him in), and I find myself casting a rather critical eye at the remainder of the pretty average bottle of Côtes du Rhône and little box of chocolates we received for it.

A good choclatier, it's true, but one you can find in St Brieuc, not special to Paris, and more than half of them are dark. And that's another thing; I almost always know my friends' preferences like that, who likes milk and who likes dark*, what vegetables they will and won't eat, whether they like their cheese grilled or not, and generally what not to serve them. (I also tend to know their colours; I remember when J1 gave J2 a piece of jewellery with an amethyst in it, an over-extravagant gesture anyway, thinking that was a silly ignorant thing to do, J2 absolutely never wears anything purple, had even mentioned the fact before, and she later confirmed this to me unprompted and aside with regard to said gift.) Nobody, my darling, could call me a fussy woman, but I've had the what-kind-of-chocolate-do-you-prefer conversation with everyone I know, I think, often several times, yet when I get chocolates, there are always too many dark ones.

The there's the matter of searching for student accommodation for Simone and Jean-Felix's daughter, interpreting and translating and trying to explain to one side that the relevé d'identité bancaire  does not exist as such in the UK, or to the other that people in Brittany can't really just pop over to Golders Green on a quick trip to look at how well the bedside light works, trying to get a word in as everyone concerned talks digressively nineteen to the dozen, so important questions are forgotten to be asked or answered. And somehow I've ended up agreeing, well, OK, volunteering but being taken up rather more readily than I expected, to travel into London from Essex on the one full day I have in England, when it might have been nice to hang out with my sister looking at Indian textiles at the V&A , to check out the room on offer, turn euros into pounds and secure it for them.

This is awful I know, better not to do anything for anyone than volunteer then grouch about it, or about what I don't get in return; labour and not ask for any reward etc. Sod it, I'm no saint.

Just say no, what I'm always exhorting others, Jung and his day off and all that. But the fact is if you blank people from the start you really end up doing without people. I'm sure my grudging meanness wary reluctance about helping others, giving of myself and doing favours means I don't have as many friends as most people expect to have. And I repeat the cliché to myself, what goes around comes around, I just sometimes lack the faith in that kind of cosmic balance. I tend to dislike being beholden to other people at all, so their being indebted to me ought to suit me, but then I suppose I resent that they don't seem to be enough aware of it.

Which may or may not be true; E wrote us a heartfelt note to accompany the wine saying how sorry she was about the problems we'd had with Bram, and how she'd be happy to do anything she could in return. She's already agreed to be on standby for our airport run if existing arrangements fall through, and to be on the end of the phone in an emergency for G and A when they house sit.

Then there are all the ways in which it has come around already, which perhaps I am ignorant and unappreciative of. E has hosted our yoga mornings, providing coffee and space for more than ten years now. She is always upbeat and good company, living on her own with her dogs with rough-and-ready, plain Dutch, style and grace, she is a tonic, and I know she's poorer than we are financially. Simone, when she was our insurance agent, was a tower of strength and good advice when it came to scrapes and prangs and worse. That was her job, it's true, but she did it in a way that was very hands-on and human, and I know by the time she retired she was getting very fed up with being the broker, stuck in the middle, continually having to mediate and meet the demands and discontents of customers and company, and I'm generally admiring of people who undergo the stresses and strains of a working life that I don't have to.

And rather to my surprise, Tom agreed quite cheerfully to accompany me to Golders Green, a hitherto unknown area of London to explore a bit, there might even be a pie shop there, so we'll make the best of it.

Then there are the people in my life, too many to mention really, like my sister who will be cheerful and accommodating about putting us up between our dashing off to north London and Iceland, treating her house like a hotel, who is always thoughtful and tactful and knowing about other people's likes and needs and giving in the extreme, and like G and A who will come and house sit while we're away and overwhelm us with food and cooking and fuss and generosity, and who delight in sharing their lovely soppy dogs with us, dogs who are very ready to be adored.

And then there's everyone who comes here and reads all this stuff even when I'm posting every day,and listens to my petty whinges, and continues to amaze and gratify with kindness and good humour and friendship, on and off-line. It all comes around in abundance really.

~

PS - I'll knit for anyone at the drop of any hat, knitting, either on commission or off my own bat, I undertake completely without any sense of onus and it never counts amongst the things I resent doing.

*or professes to. Solipsism rules, and I don't believe that anyone genuinely prefers dark to milk, they just think it makes them more sophisticated to say so. Pace to those who truly do, I know you will protest your case, but I have found my conclusion has in the past been substantiated in cases when I have placed milk chocolate (often bought by myself) beside dark (sometimes bought by them) side by side in front of them and watched them scoff down the milk unhesitatingly and leave the dark.

Socks

Faute de mieux,  or indeed faute de anything, here are three pairs of blue socks I have made in the last three months.

These were Tom's birthday socks. I knitted them over several evenings watching telly, and when I gave them to him he was genuinely surprised, having been completely unaware of their coming-into-beingness, or becomingness, or whatever. He assures me this kind of obliviousness is the product of a concentrated form of mindfulness, or perhaps mindlessness, conscious forgetfulness, willed nothingness, that refuses to spoil surprises for me in the giving. They are quite a dark blue with dull brown stripes, and knitted from the top down, with a heel flap, in the old fashioned way.

The problem with this method of construction is that you must calculate the amount of wool required and that which thou hast, and decide on the length beforehand. Even with good digital kitchen scales and doing lots of sums, one will inevitably either run out of wool (being English, I still find the word 'yarn' difficult) or have an annoying amount left over. Starting from the toe, however, as long as your know you have enough to complete the foot above the heel, after that you can go on as long as you wish, to the ankle and beyond. But this requires a satisfactory method of casting on the toe, and of turning the heel, which until recently I didn't have. Now, though, I have mastered the figure of eight for the former, and, having paid the princely  sum of $1 for the PDF, the fish lips kiss heel for the latter. The are both rather fun to execute, though I always seem to miscount somewhere on the heel on one sock and have to bodge it to adjust, but it doesn't seem to show too much. 

These were the first, which I decided were too rough and faulty to give away and kept for myself. We always get to keep the mistake/first attempt things, they mostly get quite a lot of wear. These are comfortable.

The socks below are more recent, made for one of my nieces. They are also finished off with a super-stretchy cast-off which looks a bit frilly and weird but really does avoid constrictingly-tight-sock-top misery. One ball each of merino blend fingering and a bit of another colour for the very top, which I'm rather taken with doing lately.

Most of the toe-up socks I've done have tended to be a bit long in the foot, even using the cardboard template trick that comes with the heel pattern; you really have to start the heel sooner than you think. Also, the heel isn't reinforced, as it is with a classic top-down pattern, so maybe they wear out sooner if they're worn in shoes especially.

There we are, so who knew there was so much involved in socks, other than just nipping into M&S or Carrefour or wherever and just buying a pack. At least I can link this post into my Ravelry notes anyway.

Happy reunion, Darwin's dog, hearth

Text conversation with E, Bram's mum, this morning:

E: ... All OK?'
Me: OK, bit tense at times. Tom still has his fingers.

I dislike texting, since, having only a twelve year old dumbphone, it has to be done the old-fashioned way, and, as I don't do it very often, I'm very slow at it. However, pride dictates that I don't ignore rules of orthography and grammar as a concession to my slowness, and insist on tapping out 'are you' instead of 'r u', for example, or searching the asterisk menu for the apostrophe, once I've worked out how to turn off the predictive text. And why did no one consider that 's' is one of the most commonly used letters in English, yet it's one of the few that requires as many as four clicks? I know these concerns must be almost entirely obsolete in most people's world, but I'm quaint like that, and while my old matt blue Nokia keeps going, I'm sticking with it, even if the battery does only last for one short phone call.

Anyway, she hastened back from the station, and Bram was very pleased to see her, dancing round and round her in the hall, farting merrily and adopting the demeanour I always think of as that of Darwin's dog:

A search reveals it was not in fact Darwin's own dog, but taken from the illustrations to his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,   depicting a 'dog in a humble and affectionate frame of mind' and 'the same caressing his master'.

They were very happy to be reunited, as were we to see them so. She has lately e-mailed to inform me that he seems extremely tired and appears to be sleeping the sleep of the just. It's exhausting work guarding a poor hapless human female who will insist on consorting with the enemy. 

Later, we lit the first fire of the year, which must be one of the latest yet. Debris of the past seasons: old wine corks, nutshells, spent matches, twists of paper, prunings of laurel and sumac and buddleia, screwed up paper bags and cardboard egg boxes, all having had their moments, reasons for being, their stories, most already forgotten, up in smoke. I kneel at the hearth and poke and push at the fire as it burns, finding the right angles, the right shape and size of wood, how much to open the grill and the fire doors, all an excuse to linger with the clean dry heat on my face. The Vestal Virgins were opportunists, I reckon,claiming it was an altar, a mystery, tending the sacred hearth, they just wanted to be allowed to do this, but it's as good to worship as anything, and better than much. 

Winter's here.

Dog-imposed eremeticism, Freyfaxi, flowers

Skipped yesterday, I suppose you might say the strain is beginning to tell now. Partly that of daily posting, partly of dog hosting. Poor Bram, at just over a year old, after three homes and two refuges, he doesn't know he's only here for a few days, that his mum will come and get him on Friday, (or indeed what Friday means) and restore him to a two-dog household so all the onus of doggy responsibility is not on him, that no one means him any ill, that when Tom bends down to scratch his leg across the room he is not intending to do whatever nasty thing it was someone* used to do when they bent down, or that I am not the one and only resource he has left in the world so that I must be stuck to for dear life and guarded from all comers, or at least from Tom.

Poor us that we really can't find a way to communicate this to him firmly but comfortingly, and he's a big, young dog with impressive gnashers so we begin to fear that unpredictable reaction prompted by fear and misunderstandings could deteriorate into actual aggression, which we're not prepared to cope with. A single false move seems to undo days of apparent progress, and it would take months and experienced patience and even possibly the intervention of an expensive dog psychologist to properly remedy the situation, none of which we have, but in fact we've realised it wouldn't really be what we would want to spend precious time and money doing anyway. When E entrusted him to us, with typically robust optimism, she suggested that it might help to get us over our reluctance to get another dog, but I'm afraid it has had the opposite effect, and made us wonder whether we really want to take on such a thing again at all. It seems to me a terrible thing to rescue a dog from a refuge then find you simply can't integrate its peculiarities, problems and general hitherto unseen baggage into your life and so have to take it back again, but I can see how it happens. And this week has made us miss Mol more than ever, and appreciate how marvellously balanced the triangle of the relationship we had with her was, with never any sense of preference or jealousy or hierarchy needing to be expressed at all. Plus she never ate poo, or other disgusting things, or indeed farted so as to strip the paint from the walls (another downside of being the object of his devoted, closer-than-a-brother, attachment). But then she had awful health problems from overbreeding, so it seems like you can't win.

However, E is besotted with Bram, is not a worrier and has plenty of time and space to devote to bringing him round, and no man in her life nor any plan to have one, which is just as well, as I think Bram would put the kibosh on them if she had, and if it came to an 'it's me or the dog' ultimatum with E it would be the dog every time. He came to us as she had to go to Paris to fetch a passport, a plan already arranged and paid for before she got him, his big 'brother' Moos was already booked into the kennels with the dog of the friend she was going with, and she thought he'd be better at home with us. In fact though, if she goes away again after a while, I think he'd be OK in the kennels, which are a ruggedly female-run establishment owned by a terrifyingly competent and bossy British woman, he's not too bothered by the presence of other dogs and he loves his meals and walks which he would have there.

Anyway, deciding the best thing was to get a bit of space between Bram and himself, Tom decided to make a virtue out of expediency and pretend he was going into a monastery for the day, ensconcing himself upstairs in his study with books and computer and monastic sort of music**. Except of course he gets Bovril and tea and biscuits and wine and chocolate brought to him by his wife, whom he also gets to sleep with at the end of the day, so it wasn't very monastic at all really. Unless you believe the people who told Henry VIII why he should set about the Dissolution, which by and large I suppose I do. He rather enjoyed himself anyway, and still came down for meals, when he and Bram mostly managed to ignore each other very deliberately.

Iceland mostly all planned and bookings made, rather a hectic time for us, what with plunging into hot springs, chasing the aurora, slithering around the Golden Circle (diamond geysers!) and bouncing about on Icelandic horses which are not to be called ponies. One of the few sagas I read at university in its entirety in the original Old Norse was Hrafnkel's Saga, where the horse is the agent of much mischief, I recall. I rather wonder whether we shouldn't have stuck to mooching about Reykjavik, eating and drinking and looking at museums of archaeology which I'm sure could easily have taken up three days. Should we invest in ice walkers, I wonder? What are ice walkers, I wonder, and can one buy them in Decathlon? These questions and more will doubtless be answered.

Here are some spring flowers to brighten up these sad November days.

* presumably a man since I and any other woman he meets seem to be able to move as and how we will without a negative reaction.

** which only differs from how he spends his time normally by the upstairs element, and perhaps the Gregorian chant.

After-sales; chitchat; pease

After a good start with Bram, things went a bit pear-shaped last night, and, disheartened and worried, we felt that the few days might be more to be endured than enjoyed for all of us. Tom decided to go to bed and read, only to find his still-quite-new shiny Kndle p@perwhite seemed to be broken, freezing weirdly or failing to come on altogether, then flashing up unhelpful messages. Assuming it would have to be sent back, I looked around for the very deluxe packaging and paperwork it came with, without success. I snarked at him about this, then e-mailed the relevant French limb of The Megacorporation from whence I had bought it. Within the hour we had a phone call from a very patient and polite young woman who calmly took me through the elaborate procedure of holding down the on-off button for forty seconds and waiting a few more, which miraculously resuscitated the device. If it did it again though, she said, let them know, as it might mean it really was faulty. No fuss about packaging and paperwork.

~

Bram's much better too, and the rain cleared by after lunchtime so we had another good walk. One of the things about having a dog to walk which gets you out on a regular basis is that even, or perhaps especially, in these quiet parts, you run into people, stop and talk, keep a bit up to date with things. Our former neighbour, who looks after our field, stopped his van, curious at seeing me with a dog again, and we chatted about dogs and exchanged information and thoughts about septic tanks, to our mutual benefit. When we got back, Tom said he'd go out alone on a provisioning foray. Bram seemed in fact quite bothered by his absence, and, while still quite reticent, genuinely pleased to see him and join in the rather deliberately exaggerated welcome home celebrations.

~

Less regular walking also means I'm more ignorant about what goes on in the fields round and about. When E came the other day, she pointed out (with a view to where it might not be a good idea to walk) a rather fine young silvery roan bull in one of the pastures. He was new to me, and I realised that the handsome gold coloured Limousin who used to be seen all over the place, a rather gentle seeming character, easily bossed around by the farm dogs and his harem of black and white cows, and who sometimes featured in my Molly walking blog, I hadn't seen for a long time. Scarcely earth shattering, you might say, but of no more nor less importance than many other things. When I did get out walking this year, back in the summer, I noticed a lot more fields of these pretty violet flowered peas:

sometimes on their own, sometime mixed with field beans, like small broad (fava) beans, and a cereal type plant:  

(there were some fields of just the beans, which I sometimes filled my pockets with and cooked, can't remember how)

I picked a bunch of the flowering peas and put them on the window sill, sometimes using the top shoots for salads and stir fries, but mostly just to admire.

What they were used for I don't know, they didn't seem to be there long so they clearly weren't harvested for the peas and beans, but whether they were made into silage or simply ploughed in as green manure I never saw, or spoke to anyone to learn. Pretty while they lasted anyway.

No toothache; melancholy cat; visiting dog (with photos)

Tom was fed up; just when he thought he had finished with the dentist for a while, he broke another tooth. Feeling I had been getting away too lightly, I began to suspect sensitivity and incipient toothache. When our shared appointment arrives, the dentist says that the broken part was where she'd already repaired earlier, and fixed it again without pain or problem, and my toothache having evaporated, any worries prove to be groundless save for a small amount of gum withdrawal (if that's the right expression), she blows the puffer round my teeth almost with impunity. We go home relieved.

~

I am in e-mail communication with the potential future landlady of Simone's and Jean-Felix's daughter (see previous), an Indian lady (I think) in Golders Green. She sounded nice, and very well-spoken, on the 'phone, her written English is slightly quirky. She says it's necessary to let them know, 'We have a quite cat as pet. Tabby is an old cat and does not purr a lot.'

~

Bram, who is staying with us now, is a noble and handsome dog:

though nervous of many things, goats, cows, tractors, Tom...

Also  unfortunately rather attracted to cow poo, though he takes to heart being told off for eating it,

'What me? Noooo!'

But it's good to have a dog to walk again, and to reacquaint myself with the beauty of our hilltop on a late afternoon in winter.