Firstly a quick update on Siena. She is fine, thankfully a couple of days rest and some pain killers did her the world of good, though it drove us slightly nuts as she needs her walks as an energy release.
As Pat mentioned last week, we had guests last weekend, which was lovely. M&S timed their visit well, as on Sunday our neighbour (who owns the chestnut grove, but also works with pianos) had a concert in his fantastically converted barn as an opening of his new piano showroom. The concert was a pianist and a cellist. The concert was arranged around the “theme” of Lisa Cristiani – who was a famous cellist and her last tour, which was through Siberia, in-between musical pieces there were readings from some of her personal letters. While I couldn’t understand the readings, as they were in French, the concert was great and we all really enjoyed it. One bit I did understand from the readings was the part about it snowing and snowing and snowing! Something we apparently are going to have more of this week! I think the cranes which have started the migration north may be regretting this early decision as it is very cold now (-2 at the moment) and we have more snow forecast.
With the cold but sunny weather we are planning a long walk today with Siena, and I’m also hoping to finish my Philip Pullman book at I received for Christmas. I’ve got to a good bit and put it down as I know I’m not going to finish reading it until I reach the end. So not conducive to the 30 minute read before I go to sleep at night. I have done some downloading of other books the past few weeks:
The Angry Chef by Anthony Warner – which is about bad science creeping into healthy eating – I’m loving it.
The Memory Illusion by Dr Julia Shaw – a fascinating book about how our memory works (and false memories).
The Year of Less by Cait Flanders – an interesting book about one women’s year of trying to simplify her life, started with an idea of not shopping for a year but expanded into a lot more (this one I’ve finished).
I’ve downloaded a couple more books as well, but haven’t started to read them yet. However I did go into my Amazon history and add up how much I spent on books last year and was horrified at the amount. I guess it comes from not having a library around me (or more to the point a library with English books, lots of French library’s around). So one thing I do have to do is be a bit more aware of how much I’m spending on books.
One downloaded book that has made an impact has been the CSIRO total wellbeing diet book. Yes I have done many a diet, but this time I went looking for a diet with some science behind it (this one was on a UK tv program which I found interesting as for all my non-Australian friends the CSIRO is an Australian scientific research institute). But mostly the reasoning is actually to try and find a healthy eating plan that Pat and I can stick to permanently and this looks like this could be it. We will see how things go over the next few weeks.
So on that note, I most likely should get myself out of bed and get my day started. Until next week, à bientôt – Delia