Simple life

We are staying on island, travelling only to the front street to buy noodles and avoid the fish skin, so expect no exciting tales of adventurous living it up in Hong Kong for a day or two.

I am saving all my energy for the Travelling Aunty, who will come upon us soon, putting down her suitcase and demanding dragon dancing and walled villages and all things Chinese.

In great anticipation of her arrival, I have looked at the calender and warned Shark to sweep under her bed. I don't want the sewer rat coming back and taking up residence the very night Travelling Aunty arrives. I already put her through enough rodent-related trauma with the mouse and the waste-paper basket. I want no repeat of that.

Otherwise, I have been involved in making more delightful notebooks. So I am not good company. My mind is utterly filled with that. You could say anything to me and I probably won't hear. Having acquired the indulgent red leather last week, I am now in the process of feeling it, and folding it, cutting it up and stitching paper into it.

I think there might be something a bit Freudian going on. I want some of this beautifully sensitive and textured red for my Damaged range; note books that do away with cuteness but explore this pleasurable red with broken glass, barbed wire, and knives. I am enjoying it hugely. I hope the process produces objects that are vaguely disturbing but which you want to get your hands on, nonetheless.

I won't be able to sell them to the Chinese, of course. They do not, as far as I know, associate red with sex, blood, and destruction, because red is the colour of happiness. (And officialdom and the Communist Party.)

Well, that's all I shall say on the subject, in case Anya Hindsherface is a-watching my blog.

For the educational week, the children are all being directed to the assignments, which are going fairly well. Those blogs (over here if you are desperate) allow me to start the day in a way that I can feel involved. Usually it only lasts an hour, then we can all gratefully push off to our various locations and pursue the things which matter to our souls.

I think that might be it for our Monday. I am not displeased with it. Howabout yours?