Weekend Jottings (including lopper progress)

Lopper progress

We've bought the lopper.  Now I have to wait for a calm day to use it.  Not because I think it will be difficult but because of the length of it.  When we walked back from buying it, the lopper came up to my shoulder and I'm 5'8" - felt like Neptune with the trident trundling along.

I don't know if you've ever used one of those extensions for decorating - you know like a brush handle that you can fix on the end of a roller.  We used one when we decorated the high and wide landing in our house.  Not that it was difficult to do, more that the weight of the whole thing provided one or two hairy moments as I extended it to its fullest length. 

Looking at this lopper I have a funny feeling that the same thing might happen when I'm waving it about at a tree branch.  Especially as this time I'm likely to be up a ladder too.  What looks very doable from my bedroom window feels quite different when I'm looking up at a 30 ft tree.

Bookwise

Finished the Gift of Rain.  Very tragic story full of revenge, hatred and at a deeper level love.  Interesting mix of cultural and religious ideas and beliefs.  Having it set in war provided the extraordinary circumstances of a boy taking the fate of his family on his shoulders.  In setting, completely different from Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise that I listened to as an audio book, but similar in the problems that face the human heart in conflict.  It's easy to think we'd know how we'd behave but until I was faced with threats to those I loved, I don't have any idea what I'd do to survive.

Picked up some thrillers from the library on Saturday.  None of them newly published but new reads for me.  A Dalziel and Pascoe, a Slider mystery and I think the latest Alan Banks.  With apologies to authors Hill, Harrod Eagles and Robinson that I placed their characters first. Not conscious choices in the subject matter but they all are about the fate of young girls.

Television

Watching very little television at the moment but I did sit down for two hours of wallpaper TV last night in Lewis.  Not very stretching intellectually but still.  Seeing Juliet Stevenson's character go up in flames like Brunnhilde on the funeral pyre had to be worth the time.

Speaking of placing characters first, I did notice in the credits for Lewis that the composer came before the writer.  Just a thought.