Darns

On looking through the washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her stockings were mended.

"Whoever did it? They've been done since you left here. I would never have passed such darns."

Laura crimsoned. "Those? Oh, an old nurse we've got at home. We've had her for years and years - but her eyesight's going now."

Miss Day sniffed audibly, "So I should think. To cobble like that!"

They were Mother's darns hastily made, late at night, and with all Mother's genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to beautiful. Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it as clumsily as this! To have her wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder that the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a 'stock property', borrowed from readings in The Family Herald, from Tennyson's Lady Clare. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servent, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to fret over her own stupidity.

Quotation from: The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson. 1910.

Big Snow

Dunedin just about shut down today ...

the northern motorway was closed until about 2pm

on the radio national news this morning we heard there'd been lots of crashes and cars sliding off the road in the hill suburbs.

This proved a good excuse to snuggle under the eiderdown for a wee while longer, and then snuggle up in front of the fire - all day!

Dogs on the Beach

Other people's dogs are the best sort.

If they can't be bothered to fetch the ball, you don't have to get your feet wet getting it yourself!

This pair though are something else

Their owner told us their names were Flynn and Fraser, and that they were pure bred curly coated retrievers. Seems like that they are true to their breed.

Struggle for Existence

Speaking seriously, we know that a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won't have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute. The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among men. If a writer has friends connected with the press, it is the plain duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if they exaggerate, or even lie?

Quotation: The novelist Jaspar Milvain in George Gissing's New Grub Street: a novel, London, 1891

It's sedimentary

After all the horrible wet weather today was sunny, calm and even warm. The gulls were back in fine fig, after their stay on the Oval (the local large playing fields), where last week there had been thousands of them puddling about in large areas of standing water.

The tide was out, a long way for this beach. And on the still-wet parts of the sand, could be seen some amazing runnels.

Reminiscent of the tracks made by stones shifting about on salt-flats, there had a weird out-of-this-world appearance.

A closer inspection reveals what is going on. The sea is still draining away, lowering the water table. As it does so it leaves behind the stones, in a miniature braided channel. Like a ladder in a pair of tights, the channel runs backwards up the beach.

Closer still and it becomes obvious that this is an erosion feature. It is very similar to satellite images from deserts showing wadis.

Sometimes the effect can be more or less symmetrical, providing 'antlers' to this black 'nosed' deer!

This one shows the eroded sand being deposited again as mini-deltas just beneath, and to the left of the rock. Just about the whole of erosion and deposition cycle could be seen in miniature.

Holiday Over

Sea, sun and air did their healing work, as did also the long idle days in the home garden; Laura drank in health and vigour, with every breath.

She had need of it all when, the golden holidays over, she returned to school; for the half-year that broke, was, in many ways, the most trying she had yet to face. True her dupes first virulence had waned - they no longer lashed her openly with their tongues - but the quiet, covert insults. That were now the rule, were every bit as hard to bear; and before a week had passed, Laura was telling herself that, had she been a Christian Martyr, she would have preferred to be torn asunder with one jerk, rather than submit to the thumbkin. Not an eye but looked askance at her; on every face was painted a reminder of her moral inferiority; and even new comers among the boarders learnt, without always knowing what her crime had been, that Laura Rambotham was "not the thing".

The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson, 1910.

Mad May Days

This weekend the weather has been wet, wet, wet, and windy. It has not daunted a lot of brave souls from taking a walk on the beach. Most of them had dogs, so maybe it was the dogs taking the owners for a walk.

Unusually a large tree trunk has been washed up it's almost totally covered with spume. The spume was really quite a remarkable feature. Large amounts of foamy bubbles spread all over the beach. Wherever there was a little bit of material standing above the surface of the sand, the spume gathered round it. This log had a distinct leeward and windward side.

Where there wasn't anything for the spume to stack up against, it just blew all over the place. In this photo, if you look carefully, you can see some airborne!

And here you can see tracks that balls of foam have made as they're blown across the sand.

The next day the wind had dropped, only a bit! But sufficiently for some of the gulls to return to the shoreline to see what pickings they could get from the foamy strand. They didn't look too impressed.