Too many Deadlines

I will admit to bad temper over the last two or three weeks. This is due to too many deadlines and the feeling that, despite meeting lots of deadlines, I am not getting time to do the things I want to do. I have all sorts of ideas for binding a book and I cannot see that happening in the near future. I am putting a lot of work into the screen printing course I am running in March. When that is done, there will be no more teaching this year (possibly ever). I am somewhat ruthlessly cancelling things. This was all triggered off by my daughter asking me when she could visit and me finding real difficulty in fixing on a date before mid April. We found one in the end but did it by curtailing attendance at a meeting to an hour rather than three.

One bright spot is that I am back to Wednesday afternoons spent in Reading at a music course. This  time it is on 19th century opera. I went to a course on Bach last year and knew nothing when I started and a lot more when I finished. This course is different. The tutor asks the class if they have seen the opera being discussed and the only person who puts a hand up is me. Then he says, 'Where did you see it? It has never been done in Britain' to which the answer is Aix or Munich or Zurich   as appropriate. There are people in the class who have never been to Covent Garden!! Today we were doing French Grand Opera, Meyerbeer and Halevy. And you will not catch me going to any of them. However it is all great fun and the tutor is very knowledgeable.

Other news? I spent half of Monday working out how much yarn I need for the Complex Weavers book project. Then phoning up suppliers and ordering up yarn. The primrose cotton ordered from Halls came today and I shall pick up all the rest from My Fine Weaving Yarns on Saturday.

The gardeners have cleared away a great pile of debris, flattened the area, put down a membrane  and filled the area with gravel to form a solid base. I have done my bit which was to assemble two do-it-yourself cold frames and place them on the gravel. The next job is to move all the auriculas to their new home. They will get a cold frame to themselves while the other frame is for growing on and hardening off little plants.

I took my camera to Reading today. I walk from the station over the Thames footbridge to Caversham and it is quite photogenic.

Narrow boats laid up for winter. Note the names.

The footbridge over the Thames.