A few things meshed over the past week and voila! I have a guitar.
See, I have always longed to play a musical instrument. Last year I noticed a flyer in a local cafe window offering guitar lessons. Hmmmm, I thought, maybe I should take down the phone number. Then at the weekend I got my computer magazine through the post and the free CD included ... a Teach Yourself Guitar program. Finally, the day before yesterday there it was, in the "for sale" section of our electronic staff noticeboard, a Spanish guitar in mint condition, cost £140, selling for £50.
I collected it today - sadly minus the promised "Teach Yourself Guitar" books (the vendor's mum had given them to a charity shop. "Sarah could play Greensleeves, and you could tell what it was!"). But hey! I have the computer program. Which, marvellously, includes a tuner - you bong bong bong on the string in front of the microphone and the computer widget goes green when it's in tune. Ah, the miracles of technology. All tuned up, I was able to start strumming. I did three chords: simple G, simple C and G7. They are all strummed on just three strings. Tomorrow I progress to four-string strumming.
As far as I can tell it's a nice guitar.
I'm going to plug away at the computer lessons for a bit, but I think it would be useful to have lessons with a real person - I can't seem to get my fingers into the same positions as the man in the video clips.
The weather is crispening now we're almost into October, and the trees are turning. We are told this is going to be a severe winter and I wonder if that is related to the appearance of squirrels in the back yard. I've been feeding the birds for years, and last week had my first-ever squirrel. Within two days all my seed feeders had been destroyed, the little perches gnawed off. So now I've got squirrel-proof feeders with metal perches. The squirrel still gets fed - it tips the feeder sideways so the seed pours out. But at least the birds get some of it. Bertie is useless - this morning the squirrel AND a rabbit were chowing down in the garden while he lounged around upstairs. He deigned to look out the window but claimed he couldn't see anything.
I had a housework blitz last weekend - most satsifying - but the garden has really fallen behind. The front doesn't look too bad - the lavender has done especially well this year and is just gorgeous to brush past - but the back is tragic. I'm planning to relocate the vege bed, but it seems like too big a chore at the moment. I've got a week off next month and may get stuck into it then, weather permitting. What I'd really like is a raised bed, like the ones Leighanne had at Waihola, but I remember her saying what an enormous effort it was to create them, and ... err, I'm too lazy. But it would be ggreat to have something high enough for me to work on in comfort and to keep Bertie from trampling everything. Oh, and where the vege bed is now, I'm going to put in some blueberry bushes. Yum. And maybe a plum tree up the back.
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