letter

Current work: archaeologist c8
Listening to: Plain White Ts (thanks to lovely DH)
Reading: Jane Jackson, Dangerous Waters (excellent read)

With the postal strike, it’s kind of quiet around here. Will spare you the rant about how the strikers are shooting themselves in the foot because they’re affecting cashflow and operations for small businesses, who will turn elsewhere so they can keep their firms going.

Anyway, I had a ‘relief postie’ yesterday. Admittedly, said postie was about 30 years younger and two feet shorter than our usual postman – and also yelled through the letterbox, ‘Hello, the post is here’ before giggling her head off… Bless. And there was the sweetest, sweetest letter on the doormat. (Actually, she retrieved it and delivered it to my desk. Double postie duty.)

To Mum and Dad. Your [sic] the best parents. I love you two, I’ll hug you lots!

It was signed with love, kisses and the cutest little hearts.

That’s going in my keeper box. (And I’ll correct her grammar later. I’m not mean enough to do it when she’s just told me she loves me – why destroy the moment?)

Apart from that, yesterday was pretty busy.

• School governor photographs (note to self: Kate Hardy, you are COMPLETELY round and you need to stop messing about and get an exercise routine in place)
• piano lesson (went OK, need to practise the chords and also decide whether to look at a Liszt or Schumann piece next)
• writing my book (my hero is really running away with me)
• attending an open evening at son’s high school for next year (he LOVED it, so relief all round. And what caught his eye? The science lab and the business studies (they don't do the latter until Year 10... but it looks like a really interesting course)

Was also a teensy bit naughty on the CD front yesterday.

OK, I was seriously bad.

Apart from wheedling DH into buying me the PWT album this weekend, I caught half of a programme about Genesis on Saturday evening. My favourite era for them is the mid-to-late 70s – particularly ‘Wind & Wuthering’, which is in my all-time top 5 albums. Then the programme moved on to the late 80s and the 90s, the stuff that turned me off. (‘Invisible Touch’ etc – DH was very scathing at this point about Phil Collins. Although I reminded him that ‘In the Air Tonight’ and a couple of his other solo tracks are very good, he countered with ‘Sussudio’ – sigh, can’t argue with that as it's a terrible song.) I was going to flick channels when suddenly I heard this gorgeous voice. Not something I recognised (and I, ahem, have a lot of Genesis albums, on vinyl and CD). Turns out it was a guy called Ray Wilson. I didn’t bother buying ‘Calling All Stations’ back in 1997 because I’d been so bored by ‘I Can’t Dance’ and the like – and I’ve discovered that I missed out on something excellent. Have remedied this now. And after a dabble on YouTube I’ve also bought a couple of Ray’s solo albums, because I like his voice and his musical style. (Millionairhead – the album that was the equivalent to the next Genesis album – is available on his website. So I picked that up as well… Apparently he signs orders from his website so I’m looking forward to that. He’s a bit of a babe, too.)

And finally - my part of the world is known for its amazing skies. This gloriously dramatic sky is what I woke up to this morning: