Jeni Barnett

Cronealogically speaking I should know better.
When you get to my age -over the hill, under the weather and round the bend – events should be taken in ones arthritic stride.
As an old crone – the definition of which is ‘Middle English, from Old North French carogne, carrion, cantankerous woman, from Vulgar Latin *car nia, carrion, from Latin car carn-, flesh’ – I should know better.
‘Some traditions, organizations, and individuals variously define the crone as a woman who is either 50, 52, or 56, post-menopausal, consciously aging…..’ – so in my capacity as an old crone I should know better than to repeat damaging behaviour, but I don’t.
I find myself drinking coffee, eating chocolate, sitting too close to the television, shouting about nothing, weeping without a cause, and generally making a tit of myself? I berate myself for falling off the wagon, falling from grace or just falling over, but cronealogically speaking it is undignified. I really should know better.
As an old crone I should relax into a state of non-reaction and know that all will always be for the best and that the best is yet to come and endless other cliches that have ‘best’ in the sentence. And yet, cronealogically speaking, I am about as relaxed as a mussel clinging to a rock in Orkney with an 80 mile an hour wind blowing through my beard.
So what had caused all this recrimination, you may ask….

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We have green grass.
We have white snowdrops.
We have ferns and trees and lots of little seedy balls hanging about the place which the birds are nibbling on.
I can see all these things because the snow has melted. Finally I can leave the cottage in my slippers without sinking into snow drifts.
The snow has supported my cupboard clearing, photo organising and gew-gaw throwing. Now its time to get on with life so –
Today we drove to Brighton.

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I’m still crunching on the snow.
A five minute drive into TWells and you could be forgiven for thinking that the snow was just a figment of my fertile imagination.
Massive thanks to LV for your info on malachite. I was indeed doing it wrong. Love to all of you who keep posting me and hello to some of my bloggers who have been absent.
This evening I’m continuing to trawl through years and years of photos.
I have a box for my mother.
A box for the three of us.
A box of duds when we all looked ill
And a box of professional snaps.
Hardly groundbreaking news but there’s something about the time which means I have to clear and throw.
The national news is a drip feed of agonising terror and yet more exposes of naughty journos, so whats new!

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The snow is crunchy under my wellies. I leave the house and walk to the studio, through the garden, pull off my wellies put on my slippers that Lozzie bought me for the flat, turn the radiator up, switch on my SAD lamp, and settle down to work.
My studio is a very warm, comfortable space.
This morning I drove very slowly to Chilston Clinic to see if they could help with my eye. They did. I have been doing whatever it takes to stop me having to have an operation in March.
On Saturday I suspended two malachite crystals in a bottle of water. I put the bottle inside another big glass of water.
The reason for two bottles is that malachite can be toxic if it is too strong.
I left it on the garden table for 24 hours.
The liquid is meant to have the properties of the malachite which is good for me eyeball I’m told!!!
The snow came. The water froze. The bottle cracked. I know the ice made it expand but I thought about my ‘O’ level science too late.
I’ve put out another bottle of water, with the crystals, in a stronger jar, even though John Kettley says its still ever so cold. If they crack this time I’ll wait for the big freeze.

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Curtis Stiger is singing to me. I love his new album. He came onto the show on Sunday and he sung to me in the studio. I realised that I had my eyes shut for far too long, whilst listening, l could have stared at the gorgeous man and he would never have known.
There’s a lot of muted trumpet on his new album – my favourite sound.
I am back to work with a vengeance. One week in the city of bagels and I am revived. How long it will last – who knows?
Nick Funnel is a complete angel. He and his crew helped B and I out so that we were upgraded on the way to America. We had booked BA tickets but only found out, after it was too late, that we had booked with American Airlines.
The food looked like leftovers left out in the rain, and tasted worse.
Well we weren’t really upgraded, just given seats with leg room, two first class bags of eye-shades and creams and a plastic bag with a scarf and duvet, not to mention a bottle or two of champagne with a big bowl of ice-cream to cool down the fight.
We gave Pammie the bubbly.
Nan, our Air American hostess was delightful. The same cannot be said of Sammy on the way back. He looked at me like I was a British Tourist trying it on to get an upgrade just because I was a UK citizen….which was fairly accurate.

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