Music & Books.

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~Voltaire

Ditz is blossoming. Indeed Ditz is blossoming so well she threw the entire firsts section off it's stride on Wednesday.

I think I said Ditz was singing 1st seconds. You should see Dearest roll his eyes over that one. He says no wonder Ditz is having trouble with her math if we are counting like this. What can I say? I'm a parrot. I have no idea. All I know is we end up with 5 part harmony.

I digress. Ditz was all on her lonesome on Wednesday. Her partners in crime for 1st seconds were not there, which meant for the harmony to be heard Ditz had to sing out. Now Ditz has all the attention span of a gnat & can get lost with the best of them if she allows her attention to wander but she very rarely muddles her part or hits a wrong note so she happily began chugging along singing her part, & singing to be heard. Then something very odd began to happen. The firsts, who tend to be younger & have higher voices, faltered & voices began dropping in & out as the confused 1sts followed where Ditz led. Oh my! Hours & hours of band practice paid off right then & there! Ditz stayed steady as a plumb bolt where she was supposed to be & the confused 1sts found their way back to where they were supposed to be. And that, my friends, is why each section has an experienced singer who is not going to take off down enticing bunny trails.

Three hours later Ditz wandered off asking if I'd brought food as she was simply ravenous & had a splitting headache to boot. I'm not surprised. I had one too. Our boy soprano has a big strong voice & had spent the evening busily hitting the high B. I wish he'd come down an octave or three. Yeow!

Anyway I left Ditz home on Thursday to go second hand book shopping with my friend, Sian, whom I also go camping with. Like me, Sian has many & varied interests though she mourns my disinterest in food. To really do food she needs Liddy who always thinks eating is the best part of any excursion. I reluctantly stop to eat only if someone [like Liddy] becomes very insistent.

Anyway we took off early with high expectations & a good cash flow to find that Sian's car had a flat battery. It was very obvious the day was never going to be the day we'd planned so I wandered off to the phone box & asked Ditz to get Dearest to put Liddy's car keys on the next ferry & we went & had coffee while we waited. We then swapped cars & went & got Sian a new battery & detoured to check on Dino who has busted his shoulder yet again & has been told he has no other option than surgery ~ the sooner the better. He is not a happy laddie.

Most of the morning had evaporated but we changed the battery over & headed off only to find the bookshop was closed for lunch. Sian looked at me with disbelief & we headed off for coffee while we waited!

Great bookshop. Nothing from my *if you ever see one of these, nab it* list but I got a shell identification book quite cheap. We spent several happy hours rootling through stacks & piles & three deep in the shelves before paying for our purchases & heading for the 2nd shop. This too was closed. You wouldn't read about it, would you?! Bold as brass the notice declared the shop was open Monday to Thursday from 11am to 5pm & here it was, 3 o'clock & locked up tight. We went for coffee on the off chance the owner was having a late lunch. We gave her plenty of time & had lunch too. I ordered this very yummy honey & mustard salad that I must try & emulate at home : baked sweet potato & pumpkin, cooked carrot, grilled capsicum, wilted English spinach, very young & tender, with just a taste of honey & seeded mustard. It was very yum.

The shop remained tightly locked & padlocked so we came home detouring to the dump to dump the old battery & my, wasn't that fun! Nope, I can't share. Sian can't believe they actually let me loose on proper roads driving proper cars ~ in traffic but I ask you; What is a girl to do if she misses her turn on a one way circuit? No, I wasn't driving but I knew just what to do. If you ever found yourself heading back down a highway into a country you've just left & have no desire to return to in a hurry you'd know what to do to. Come to think of it my reaction was rather like Sian's. Maybe I've just lived with Dearest too long. He used to ride bikes. Enough said.

And Ditz missed me. I don't think she did more than look at the work I left her but she did bake. She did not wash up. Iss missed me too. He told me so by dancing at me pretending he was a big ferocious lion until I picked him up & he began to purr. Liddy was relieved she didn't have to cook dinner two nights running & Dearest was just relieved to get fed. It's nice to be missed.