I had a delightful weekend enjoying the autumn at my parents house. The horse chesnut tree had dropped all it’s conkers but I climbed it anyway, swinging from the branches as the harvest went on below me.
A single apple remained on the apple tree so we claimed it before it fell to the ground and was carted off by the ants.
It’s time my kids learnt how to climb trees and it’s also time that they learnt how to play conkers, since it’s looking increasingly like it will be banned in the UK when they start school. Madness. We strung a few up and I took my best one to work this morning; it’s now a one’er after quickly dismissing it’s first opponent. Challenge me if you dare.
A book bought by my Mother at the local library provided this:
If I could be an architect
I’d draw up new designs
With ears and tails and curly bits
Not angles, corners, lines,
And then, instead of boring flats
And houses shaped like boxes,
We’d live in brick sheep, tiger towns
And rows of terraced foxes.
It’s from If Only by Richard Edwards, a children’s book of short poems along with ink illustrations by Alison Claire Darke. Mothers seem to be a running theme on this blog lately.
Craft has also been a theme of late, and this will continue in my next entry. This is merely an intermission, typed to pass the time as I record (ahem) the Radio 3 program about pottery and ceramics I heard on Sunday evening as I drove around Ironbridge in the dark, completely failing to find the hotel that was hosting Matthew’s wedding reception (sorry Matt!).
It’s an interview with Edmund de Waal about his career as a potter. The whole interview is brimming with Ideas and it crosses many of the fields of thought that I’ve journeyed across here over the last few months. I shall transcribe my favourite bits and post them over the next few days. In the meantime go and have a listen via the BBC’s ‘listen again’ feature.
When I’ve finished the typography course I think I shall take up pottery.