Mother's day... with menaces
Gosh. I've not posted forever. I do need to post about last week's holiday (a cottage in Noke, near Oxford, in which we visited Many Museums, marvelled over how familiar yet utterly changed Oxford was, and Some Of Us ate a ridiculous amount of cake.) I also need to post about What I've Read over the last month. (In case I don't get round to it, I'll list then later.) I also have an exciting, much delayed, triangular patio area with associated flowerbeds, which I've been planting today, and a scary Big Walk looming in a mere 2 weeks.
But for now, I'll just post about the Mother's Day card I sent to my Mum this year. My Mum is a massively keen gardener, who has always prided herself on being a rugged, horny-handed heaver sort of gardener, not a fragrant dead-heading-on-a-kneeler one. Although she's having to be more careful nowadays, due to being almost 80 and suffering from balance issues, she's still never happier than when out with a spade, covered in mud, winning a battle of wills with a recalcitrant shrub. So this year, I bought her a card with various gardening related images. Since I know that her Favourite Tool is a spade, I drew a spade in addition to the various items depicted. I added some rugged mud to the flowery wellies and pink gloves. I tried to add some warring blackbirds, but they grew too big, so I replaced them with an assertive robin.
And then I added a dead rat. You see, a recurring theme of her recent phonecalls has been the rat visitor which she growls at, snarls at, and generally ill-wishes all the evils of all the world upon. "It's not dead yet!" has been fairly constant. So I thought a garden-themed card for her would be brightened up with a dead rat. As I walked with a colleague to a nearby library that was moving house, I said, "I've just drawn a dead rat on my Mum's Mother's Day card. I wonder if anyone else in the world has ever done that." ("Um... WHY?" was his eventual response, after a long moment of silence.)
Anyway, my Mum was delighted by the card. "How on earth did you manage to find a card that included my Favourite Tool, a spade?" "Um... I drew it on," I admitted. "I mean, they don't actually sell cards with dead rats on." [Silence.] "You didn't think the dead rat was suspicious?" "Well, it did seem a bit odd," she admitted, "but you get some strange things in the world today." "I bought it from Sainsbury's!" I told her, "not from some underworld Mafia boss card shop, where every greeting card delivers an ill-concealed threat."
What I've read, to be expanded in a separate post. One Day.
The Just City trilogy - Jo Walton (re-read)
Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie (loved it!)
Sorcery and Cecelia series (re-read)
The Power of three - Diana Wynne Jones (re-read, because we were holidaying on Otmoor. But we found no Dorigs. Only hares. But I like hares. :-D)
Newt's Emerald - Garth Nix
And possibly something else I've forgotten at the moment. Now rereading Coronets and Steel by Sherwood Smith.
But for now, I'll just post about the Mother's Day card I sent to my Mum this year. My Mum is a massively keen gardener, who has always prided herself on being a rugged, horny-handed heaver sort of gardener, not a fragrant dead-heading-on-a-kneeler one. Although she's having to be more careful nowadays, due to being almost 80 and suffering from balance issues, she's still never happier than when out with a spade, covered in mud, winning a battle of wills with a recalcitrant shrub. So this year, I bought her a card with various gardening related images. Since I know that her Favourite Tool is a spade, I drew a spade in addition to the various items depicted. I added some rugged mud to the flowery wellies and pink gloves. I tried to add some warring blackbirds, but they grew too big, so I replaced them with an assertive robin.
And then I added a dead rat. You see, a recurring theme of her recent phonecalls has been the rat visitor which she growls at, snarls at, and generally ill-wishes all the evils of all the world upon. "It's not dead yet!" has been fairly constant. So I thought a garden-themed card for her would be brightened up with a dead rat. As I walked with a colleague to a nearby library that was moving house, I said, "I've just drawn a dead rat on my Mum's Mother's Day card. I wonder if anyone else in the world has ever done that." ("Um... WHY?" was his eventual response, after a long moment of silence.)
Anyway, my Mum was delighted by the card. "How on earth did you manage to find a card that included my Favourite Tool, a spade?" "Um... I drew it on," I admitted. "I mean, they don't actually sell cards with dead rats on." [Silence.] "You didn't think the dead rat was suspicious?" "Well, it did seem a bit odd," she admitted, "but you get some strange things in the world today." "I bought it from Sainsbury's!" I told her, "not from some underworld Mafia boss card shop, where every greeting card delivers an ill-concealed threat."
What I've read, to be expanded in a separate post. One Day.
The Just City trilogy - Jo Walton (re-read)
Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie (loved it!)
Sorcery and Cecelia series (re-read)
The Power of three - Diana Wynne Jones (re-read, because we were holidaying on Otmoor. But we found no Dorigs. Only hares. But I like hares. :-D)
Newt's Emerald - Garth Nix
And possibly something else I've forgotten at the moment. Now rereading Coronets and Steel by Sherwood Smith.