Louisa Parry's Three Beautiful Things » cool sounds

Justification, ker-plosh, bwark-kuk-kuk

louisa — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:00:52 +0000

1. The heavy rain disrupts my gardening plans. Instead, I curl under a blanket with the dreaming dog and finish reading my book.

2. On the drive to Bingley, John makes poo-hitting-water noises and I can’t help but laugh and laugh.

3. There is just enough time between the rain stopping and night falling for us to do our most important outside chores. I clean out the chicken coop and the girls cluck around me to say thanks.

100 miles north-north-east: day one

louisa — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:00:43 +0000

1. Hundreds of chickens – little red specks in the giant field – mill about in the early morning mist.

2. The blue robed woman stands in her garden, watching the train go by.

3. Suddenly the rows of terraced housing give away. The glorious green slopes draw the eye down to the curve of the steely river.

4. For the second time that day, I’m surprised by the quality of the chocolate brownie I’m eating.

5. I love it when posh-voiced older people swear randomly.

6. We’ve chatted over email and IM but it’s the first time we see each other face to face in nearly a decade. I’m surprised how familiar his voice still sounds.

7. I’ve had three long-time-no-see reunion incidents over the last few years and this one is by far the best. I’ve missed them a lot.

Crack, a pretty coincidence, accomplishment

louisa — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:00:34 +0000

1. The sharp snap as I break the twigs.

2. The arrangement of the washing on the line looks deliberately composed. The duck-egg blue of the bath towels, the washed out mid-blue of the dog ones and the soft turquoise & cream of the tea towels all coordinate while standing out against the leafy green backdrop.

3. A productive day and completing a goal – a meal made entirely from stuff from our garden.

3BT – sounds, Boron’s outside time, by the beck

louisa — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:00:04 +0000

1. Two pleasantly dull sounds within ten minutes of each other – the sound of vomit hitting a window in a cartoon and the knock of wood on wood as I throw logs onto a pile.

2. Boron watches us from the wall then when I rest, he pads over to sit on my knee. One of his longest stints in the garden for a long time – spring must be on its way.

3. We stand by the beck – deep in the woods but still in our garden – holding hands and talking about our future.

3BT – pate, cats, plunk-plink!, delights

louisa — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:00:33 +0000

1. The toast is evenly brown and perfectly crisp. The pate is strongly flavoured but delicious, and stirs in me the desire to make my own. I add it onto my “things to make” list.

2. Throughout the day, all the cats visit me at my desk. They sit on my knee between my body and the table, and purr as I stroke their soft-soft chests while I work.

3. The water plunks when it hits the growing body of water in the cup but plinks! (with an exclamation mark) when it hits the edge.

4. Katherine and I watch dogs parading (in Best in Show) and eat Jaffa cakes, while Joe murmurs over the baby monitor.

3BT – dishwashing symphony, plans, new decade

louisa — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:59:29 +0000

1. The pots and pans peal sonorously in the ceramic sink.

2. The end of the year & decade encourages me to reflect, to plan. A number of friends are doing “101 goals in 1001 days” but I think that’s too many and too long for me – I’d either end up listing things I didn’t really want to do or lose momentum and fall short. I decide to come up with 10 for 2010 instead.

3. We don’t have TV (no one thinks of the radio) and all our watches & phones are out of sync so there is no countdown to midnight. When we guess it’s about the right time, we exchange ‘happy new year’s and when I open the balcony door, the cacophony of bangs & whoops tells us we’re about right. I step out onto the balcony alone but Dathan & Olli soon join me. While fireworks boom and Chinese lanterns rise in the distance, we discuss our thoughts on the overriding themes of recent decades*, Jordan Catalano & trench warfare/the Somme. The great silver moon watches us throughout.

* Negatively, I agree with the Hadley Freeman article in the Guardian about the Noughties (oh, how I hate that word) being a decade defined by fakery – fake reality (such as reality TV), fake reasons for going to war, fake science and of course, a fake election to start with – but more positively, I think it’s been a decade of reversing the planet (and people) abuse of the previous decades. It obviously started well before 2000 but it’s gone mainstream this decade – more people care about finding ethical and environmentally-friendly alternatives now than they did in the past. There is still a long way to go of course.

3BT – whoosh, wood and weird

louisa — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:00:07 +0000

1. I move from room to room opening the curtains to let in the day. My favourites are the ones in the dining room because they whoosh dramatically.

2. The wood splits perfectly down the middle and by coincidence, the logs I’ve chosen stack neatly in the box. Despite the snow on the ground and on the wood itself, I’m sweating by the time I’ve carried the box up the stairs into the house and I’m reminded of an article I read a few months ago, about how wood should heat you three times: once with the exertion of felling the tree, once with the exertion of splitting it, and then finally when it’s on the stove.

3. I plop a heavy bubble of cranberry & cinnamon bath foam into the water. The torus is blood red and looks stunning but frighteningly visceral. I store the image in my mental “if I ever need gory special effects for a homemade horror movie” file.