Ah, I’m getting a bit hermit-like then, eh? Well, actually no — I’m not. Both individually and as a couple, we have plenty of social outings each month, but they are done with intent and thus with joy.

My social patterns seem to be a source of curiosity though and are frequently commented on. There have always been people in my life who don’t understand my desire for solitude and wonder why I feel compelled to limit my exposure to crowds and throngs or random encounters. I have never felt the necessity to pop into the village for pointless errands just so I could see someone other than the husband throughout the day. But does that make me eccentric?

This could potentially be the beginning of an essay or two on the joys of solitude and I shall begin by recounting a story from two decades ago.

I was travelling on a train in Europe and I had just left Vienna and was headed for Venice. Happily traipsing around the Continent all by myself, I had never felt miserable or sad or in any way diminished by the lack of a travel partner. On the contrary, I had no one but myself to answer to schedule wise and I hopped on and off of trains in various countries as I saw fit, with no fixed plans, and there was no one else to insist that we go out and get a proper dinner at night if all I wanted to do was sit in the hotel room, decompress, write in my journal, and eat cheese and fruit. I’d been having a delightful time and wasn’t fretting about anything.

But then the retirement aged American couple sat down across from me in the first-class dining car and proceeded to grill me during the entire meal about WHY did I want to travel alone and the woman ended up by pronouncing quite firmly that there was something “not quite right” about wanting to travel around solo without (option #1) a MAN to keep me safe or (option #2) a girlfriend to prevent me from being accosted by “foreign men” who might have dastardly ideas in mind. You would have thought it was 1959 — not 1989!

Carefully prying myself loose as the train arrived in Venice, I waved off their invitation to dinner and made my way to my hotel on the Grand Canal where I had a room with a view overlooking that mosquito filled waterway. I sat in the window composing shot after shot through the viewfinder of my camera and was grateful for the silence.

Nothing has really changed in my life. I do my best writing when I am undisturbed and my best artwork when my flow will not be interrupted. Over the years I have often wondered how some people of an artistic nature — other writers, other painters — manage to ever get any work done at all when they are spending so much time in daily or almost daily social interaction. They must be far better than I at multi-tasking and I actually do not envy them that level of juggling. Just being a wife and a partner in my husband’s business in addition to being a writer and artist requires quite enough juggling, thank you very much.

I choose my moments for being social and anyone who truly knows me will recognise the difference in my appearance immediately. When I am in a quiet space of contemplative solitude, the light is on in my eyes — but there is also a lot going on behind those eyes. When I am in a social mindset, the light is on in my whole face.

No, I am not hermetic — but I am, both by inclination and necessity, selective with my time and creative energy. And hermetic versus selective are two rather different states of being.

DVDs by the Dozen go Bye-Bye!

I will be finished with the DVD listings (3 dozen so far!) this week and next week starts the really big BOOK PURGE! Our darling cottage is far to small for 850 books to be atop groaning shelves. Now they will find new homes elsewhere!

Happily, I can also report that I’ve already hauled several loads of household items off to the charity shops.

My dear friend K said to me the other day — “What’s happened to your musings? People miss it when you don’t post your musings!”

Give my poor little hand a chance to recover from the repetitive stress of holding a computer mouse whilst cropping and editing photos — and I’ll be back!

Hope to have some new photos to share by the end of the weekend of the completed (fingers crossed!) addition to the cottage. It’s such a lovely space.

The weather got hot and humid and I got a smidge grumpy about the balancing act of sorting, organising, listing, donating, and making stacks of things to list on ebay. The cottage is air conditioned — the studio is not. And I am working in the studio most of the time. Hmmm — not a happy little gal in the heat.

Bear with me — I’ll be back soon!

Between a frock and a hard place. (vintage clothing boutique tours)

Dead at 47??? (examining ageist stereotypes)

Southern fried chic: Old-fashioned chicken is in again. (and several recipes are in the article!)

Green Property: The House That Costs 60 GBPounds A Year To Heat.

Australia ‘must plan new city’ to cope with population . (we’re booming ‘down under’)

Woman Collides With Picasso. (how mortifying is that?)

Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm. (serious issues to examine)

Entire back of station wagon is FULL!

It has been a bit startling over the last 3 days to open up box after box and find untold amounts of clothing, shoes, bedding, and decorative items — but those are all now things that someone else will be able to use. There are dozens more boxes to go through and I plan to stay on task until I have thinned out at least 2/3 of the contents of the studio and we can actually use it for the purpose that it was built!

Baby Ginger sometimes accompanies me on these little daytime adventures, but he just gave me a look this morning when I asked him if he wanted to go to the studio. He does understand what I am talking about and knows those words well since that’s where he sleeps every night. But here is the look that he gave me…

You're kidding - right? You want me to get OUT of bed again?

and then he drifted straight off to sleep in his little bed — a recycled French wine box.

Baby Ginger asleep in his French wine-box bed