Sheep of consciousness

George

Work hard and play hard doesn’t seem to work for me I was so damn tired when I finished all my urgent work on Friday I was only good for going home to bed and the next day wasn’t a whole lot better despite being spent with R and R’s friend A at I-knit Day which really was wonderful because Gerard and Craig of I-knit are energetic and innovative but never less than their warm kind selves which is not at all how I was when involved in organising big events so I am full of admiration my favourite was the talk by Jane Sowerby on Victorian lace knitting which reminded me of my grandmother even some of the intricate leafy patterns rose up and met their shadows in my memories from forty-five or fifty years ago a weird and bitter-sweet sensation in complete contrast but just as compelling the strong motifs of Icelandic knitting were like nothing I’d ever seen and Helene Magnusson has done an incredible job for her adopted country in recording and revamping these I’m never sure if humour is going to make me laugh but the Yarn Harlot did a lot as well as offering a timely reminder of knitting as meditation and therapy in hard times which seem to be now so I must do more of it and did do more of it when I got home (having not made it to the bitter end and missed seeing the best knitted alien which I now of course hugely regret) and the next morning when I still felt like shit but got up eventually and went out to see the Hammershoi exhibition again because it was the last day and I’m so glad I did despite the very strange bus journey during which a rather old no really I am rather old so he was a very old Turkish man sat next to me and talked and I probably shouldn’t have enthused so much about Turkey and all things Turkish Orhan Pamuk carpets the Istanbul skyline and so forth because then he started grabbing and kissing all the bits of me he could get at which wasn’t much I can tell you and offering me his heart and regular free holidays in Turkey please let it be his stop soon oh good ouf but the day got better because M from my meditation group was volunteering at the gallery and got me in free and straight away I ran into my good friend D who’d dashed out on impulse on her own too to see it on the last day because I and others had gushed about it to her so we went round together and had tea afterwards and then I found the new Sunday Philosophy Club book in Hatchards nothing better for a tired and jaded mind (the first chapter is here) and took it to bed and rather quickly fell asleep over it.