The past is but a sniff away.

While I was doing my caring daughter-in-law bit, in Braintree, I became attached to that stuff you find in dispensers, fixed to the wall, just inside hospital wards (complete with large explanatory and declamatory signs exhorting you to sanify yourself both before and after approaching patients..oh, sorry, sanctify...no no, sanitise. Actually sanify was better.).
I felt that Father and I were potentially dangerous to each other and should be protected. (And sanified)I did occasionally get confused about the order in which to do the sanitising but I didn't mind too much as I like the smell.

Today I remembered what the smell reminded me of. My mother used to use some moisturising stuf called 'Glymeal Jelly'...or maybe it was 'Glyneal'. Pale greenish and semi clear it was.* And naturally I loved the smell. (Along the same lines as a certain generation loving the smell of Johnson's baby lotion. If you ever need to tame a dangerous, oldish grandparent or aunt or uncle, approach them with an open bottle of JBL**...they may become putty in your hands. Or I suppose thay might instead revert to lying on the floor, screaming and kicking their heels?)
Another smell I rediscovered (during breast feeding) was that of Kamillosan. My dad used to provide a small, brown, magic ointment for random skin damages, which must have had chamomile in it judging by the powerful (and heavenly) smell.
Then there was Dad's cough mixture which I believe consisted of some kind of herbal anticongestant in a water and alcohol base delicately laced with opium? laudanum? Whatever the medical profession used at the time. It was supposed to taste vile but it was amazing how quickly one became attached to it! Sadly I haven't re-encountered that particular scent. But I remember it vividly.
Vic! the powerful reek of camphor. The stuff that cut through the fog of misery during measles and other snuffly diseases. The only thing you could actually smell at all. The Body Shop did a bergamot (?) cologne for a while which had camphor in it. The EU regulations deprived me of that one.

On the other hand or more aptly, up the other nostril, my hairdresser sold me some hair crisping stuff a year or two ago which smelt exactly like the stuff my auntie Pellie used to smell of. In fact a lot of seriously permed ladies smelt of it...a kind of dry powdery smell with additives. It had attitude too...a starchy, bosomy kind of attitude. The kind of smell in which you feared you might permanently be buried during excessive clutching and kissing moments when such ladies arrived or left. "it's really strong stuff" said the hairdresser ( a girl of about 20) "and it's got a lovely scent". I think she must have had a dearly beloved, heavily-permed, aged relative in her past.

When we first got our dog I was tempted to feed him filler biscuits drenched in marmite and hot water..I tell you, to a small hungry child, who won't get dinner until after the dog's been fed, the hot marmitey aroma and the rising yeasty scent of freshly warmed dog biscuit is a promise of all good things under the heavens arriving soon.
Our current dog missed out though, because it's a dreadful fag mixing all that stuff and the children didn't swoon with joy when I tried it once or twice. Anyway, he gets Pedigree complete which is obviously better than my half baked memories and has plenty of vitamin B in it to boot.

Nostalgia
Is the theme of today's post***
Except for this one...I took a picture of some leaves in the water which was so clear you couldn't tell they were under it. And I used a polarising filter so it didn't show any of those annoying (but sometimes attractive) pale blueish streaks you get. So I had to put the ripples back with Photoshop.

This is nostalgic for me because its's from Bristol.
And this is a crooked tree. Grows down a crooked lane too.
Now I'm going to eat Spaghetti with tomato sauce and cheese. The dog has been fed and the day has been good. Hope yours was too.

*In those days, cream was white and brown skin was common as dirt and green wasn't 'in' yet by a few decades...I can't imagine what the Glyneal Jelly's advertising people thought they were doing unless they were trying to promote an image of ethereal semi-transparent delicacy.
**One of the earlier newsworthy surveys found that a whole generation of adults were soothed and made happy by the smell of Johnson's baby lotion and it was concluded that this was because of the cooling, soothing effect on a generation of nappy-sore bottoms.
***Did I ever mention the party with a theme of cheese? That's what we were told when we arrived...the theme of this party is cheese..the information was proffered as proudly as if on a silver plate. We made the sort of noises that you make when any and all of the first six or ten things that come into your head cannot be said. And when you're stifling snorts of hysteria mingled with anxiety (as in, oops, how boring is this party going to be exactly?).
Aah! if only I'd known in advance though. I could have worn cream with a soft white hat and a small piece of ripe camembert cunningly concealed under each armpit.

Beelzebub, in Waitrose 's car park, er, cometh

It was like this see.
I'd just done the shopping after a potentially satisfying afternoon with the camera and as I came out of Waitrose, thunder rolled and a distant flash of lightning split the inky horizon. (Good so far?)
I got into the car and suddenly saw, just beside me, an ethereal appariton, tremblingly, yellow-gold leaved, outlined against that same indigo cloud that had so recently glowed in electrical violence. I grabbed the camera (muttering about tripods and shopping and car-boots), balanced it on the window frame, cursed a passer by (that is a passer-through the cars and between me and my subject) who couldn't understand why I was taking pictures of a car park and said so, and snapped this probably never-to-be-repeated shot of the shimmering Ge-lory I had spotted. Bound to be out of focus I muttered, probably won't get the colours right...muttermuttermuttermuttermutter...went home.
Uploaded a lot of stuff and found.....

Beelzebub :)
Or at any rate, a horned, glowing-eyed monster.*

It's a pity I didn't feel like making the effort to get the tripod out and get a focussed shot of the yellow tree because it was quite impressive. On the other hand the wind was getting up and the golden leaves were really shimmering...too much for a good shot. Oh well, a bit of fun with photo shop.
I'm not sure I shall ever be a serious photographer.
Or indeed serious at all!

*You really have to view the picture large to get the full beezebubness of it...took a good deal of effort to get the horned, glowing eyes just right!** Also three glasses of wine.
**Oh ok. approximately right.

A folded up city

Bristol is a fantastically curved and folded place. You stand on top of a multi-storey car park and you're surrounded by towers and spires and roofs that look near enough to touch. Tiny vistas are painted on skies that seem just a step away beneath clouds that reflect the Severn Estuary. Looking down, you can see toy houses and streets just beneath your feet.
I love it.
Yes, thank you, I enjoyed my day and came home, not only with a few (350 odd) pictures but also saw my sister, who lives there. This was a special pleasure because I didn't think she'd be at home and just expected to deliver a parcel and be on my way. Very good indeed. Also had a delicious bread thingie and coffee which was very good and easy journeys both ways.
And when I got home I found that at least one of the pictures was good enough. Those of you who take photos will know what I mean...you can take hundreds and they'll be nice and you'll be quite pleased. But every so often there's one that you look at and think Oh yes! If I'd only come home with a single picture, this would be the one. I got one today! (and a few more)*

Free gift, this one. I was leaning over the edge of the multi-storey and suddenly realised that there were some 4 or 5 other people pointing cameras out at the sky! I imagine there will be a few rainbows on Flickr and around the blogithing tonight :)

This was a free gift too...a small boy and his mum were putting peanuts down for the squirrels and this one posed for me. I don't think he knew which way round the tree to get to the peanuts quickest.
The Cabot Tower.
Near Clifton Suspension Bridge
This one's for you Older Sister :) Thankyou for the wine and the welcome...hope I didn't stay too long :)
*Which one do you think?

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

If you could keep one of these in your sitting room you could just throw all your CDs and tapes and Mpegs away. There is apparently no limit to the musical sounds that can be reproduced by six people with voices and ukuleles. Also while one plays a melody by Handel, the other five can sing and play five different songs all of which sound perfectly fine together. How this is possible I'm not sure but I did hear it with my own ears tonight.
Quite reasonably amazing. Very good even.

This car park isn't particularly photogenic but I see it so often that I sometimes succumb to the urge to take a picture anyway. And I liked the colours.

Sleep well people. I think I shall go to Bristol tomorrow and take pictures there.* I like Bristol.

*Unless it rains a lot.

The sorrows of the young - not to be dismissed

I am in fact a happier bunny today, than I expected to be. I had an appointment to which I went in fear and trembling and a certain anticipatory, sullen fury, with the dental hygenist. As I sat down I said in a smallish voice, "my teeth are all nice and warm and they really hate it when you do that hot pneumatic drill and ice cold water thing..can you keep it to a minimum"?

*Amazing! She became all friendly and understanding and instead of laying into my fragile little pegs with the heavy supersonic stuff she scrunched and scrabbled away with the old fashioned curvy picks and apologised over the polishing and seemed to be doing a very satisfactory job to boot! We discussed interdental bottle brushing and oxygenated mouthwash in a friendly way and I learnt all about her horse who may well be dying of colic (they do sometimes). And I came away with untroubled but shiny teeeth and a bottle of mouthwash. And a memory from long ago.

Visits to the hygienist usually leave me feeling cross, sulky, vulnerable and as if I’m sixteen again, or worse. (Today was an exception).

So, what with the poor colicky horse and having watched a programme about teenage alcoholics last night (which was utterly harrowing), on the way home I suddenly remembered an occasion when I was about 16 and all my waking hours were devoted to horse. (specifically a small, grubby, grumpy Dartmoor-Arab cross...well, the Arab bit was all in the tail and the pretty nose...who was given to kicking the unwary (me) and won many gymkhana events not by being fiery and fast but by plodding boredly and steadily when all around him were losing their marbles). I had a best friend, similarly devoted, (hers was a hackney pony, who was ALL fire and frisk and pointy ears and won many events by getting to the end before he lost his marbles (which meant he had to be pretty fast).
We did all kinds of stuff together, with and without our beloved hoofed maniacs. We travelled Dartmoor, we rode up hills, down dales and through wildernesses, forded rivers and climbed (small) mountains...well tors as we call them in Devon. We galloped, plodded, fell off, bounced, scrambled and splashed every possible way of wending around the forty or so miles surrounding our homes. Every Summer we regularly set off at dawn to local horsey events and competed ferociously. We were Thelwell children personified except for the pigtails. (and Alpha and The Count had the requisite numbers of legs appropriately placed).

One Summer afternoon, we discussed going to a local four day event (that means a bit of showjumping, a bit of prancing about in a disciplined sort of way, and a bit of thundering across the countryside leaping hedges and falling into rivers..always very entertaining for the bystanders). And best friend decided she didn't want to go.

I've never understood exactly why (maybe it was that time of the month) but as she rode off home it suddenly seemed like I'd been deprived of EVERYTHING that was important to me, as if she'd TOTALLY betrayed me and abandoned me and NOTHING could ever make up for it.
And I began to cry...large tears and huge sobs and enormous snotty snivellings. Which embarrassingly and dreadfully went on for the next THREE DAYS! This whole emotional event was largely concealed from my parents and apart from a kindly passer by asking if I was alright (on the second evening while I was howling my misery to Alphie's feet in the garage where he was stabled) whereupon I stopped wailing, reverted instantaneously to sullen teenagerhood and said "fine thankyou" before carrying on, albeit rather more quietly, amongst the straw and dung and stuff, nobody knew that I was suffering from...what???
Least of all did I know what I was suffering from. Being of a naturally analytical and unemotional turn of mind, I could see that I was being really weird...I could see that Best Friend not wanting to go to a four day event wasn't good enough cause for me to become emotionally unhinged to such an extent. I could see that there must be some reason for this huge and unmanageable despair and in between sobs and howls and snuffles (and of course, food, parents, bedtimes, mucking out and life in general) I had lengthy internal dialogues about what precisely was so unbearable. No answer was forthcoming and no answer ever has come. Infuriatingly I never have understood what the hell was the matter with me. I don't think I ever will know.
After three days, Best Friend came round and I hid behind Alphie's scruffy neck in acute embarrassment and muttered "I've been crying a bit". "Oh Why?" said Best Friend in concern. "Umm, Err, because you don't want to go to Ugbrook" said me, all puffy and swollen and snotty. Best Friend was astonished and, naturally, upset and after hugs and exclamations of amazement she said "I'd no idea it was so important to you, of course we'll go".* (Dammit, I'd no idea it was so important to me either!)
And I stopped crying and the sun came out (probably...it did that quite often even then) and actually I quite quickly forgot about the whole thing.
So, Ok, it probably was that time of the month, I probably had family stuff to 'work through', maybe there were other things happening that I forget now which added to whatever it was, maybe I was emotionally repressed and the disappointment opened a valve. Whatever.
The point is, if there is one, that children have ENORMOUS emotions. Children's emotions are at least adult sized and therefore, much bigger than themselves. And children these days drink alcohol. Aah! That's what triggered this memory.

After last night's programme on teenage alcoholics I was thinking God help me, if I'd been a drinker, then.

Then, there wasn’t any way I could avoid feeling my enormous emotion however trivial its trigger. But also I had the opportunity to discover that it would go away and to look back and wonder what the hell it was all about. But children drink these days. (then, I had never drunk alcohol or tried drugs so I had no idea that such things might have made a difference to my feelings...I just didn't know how drink felt). If there’s one thing alcohol is good at, it’s deflecting the intensity of unwelcome emotion. And children have these emotions at the drop of a hat...they don't need to come from broken homes or to feel unloved or to be abused, babies come complete with full sized rage, misery and despair just as they come with full sized joy, ecstasy and laughter.

No wonder there are 13 year old girls and boys out on the streets drinking bottles of vodka and litres of cider. They feel fine, they don't seem to have hangovers and they don't feel the braindamage. They don't like the taste but they get used to that. They feel fine.

I can't help feeling that children should never be given alcohol...not a sip of Dad's beer, not a little glass of champers, not a taste of Mum's wine. They should go on thinking it's something nasty tasting that grown-ups do for as long as possible. Not until they're as adult as their emotions and far far wiser than the adults around them. But maybe I'm over-reacting?

*I suddenly saw another connection between these two tales. I told two people what I wanted and they both said "yes". Sometimes this works really well!

I've been to London to see the Kew

It's a very nice place. It's also quite big and yesterday it was fairly damp underfoot. I saw Queen Charlotte's cottage inside and out and from the top down. It's going to look nice when Barney and partner have finished the ridge...at present it's shrouded in scaffolding and plastic mesh over the edges of which you may occasionally see a thatcher's head or a visiting official.(This is a thatcher's head)
After taking pics for the business website, I went off to explore. By the time I'd reached the main gate, via most of the glass houses and gardens in between, my feet hurt and I needed coffee, food and a map in that order. (But I got them in the reverse order) I restrained the urge to ask random people if they might possibly be a blogger looking for me (just in case I Like The View was there and there was such a person there, as it turns out, so I wasn't being totally daft).
I met a fabulous Ginko Biloba and a rather tired looking pagoda tree. Hundreds of gorgeous sycamore and acers and other things I couldn't name. The sun came and went and I also saw Tony from the 'Trees that made Britain' series which was odd because I thought I was seeing someone I knew. And did that 'Oh hello' look with the eyebrows which primates do when they meet an acquaintance before I realised that I don't actually know him at all. He is obviously accustomed and returned a 'pleasant but no you're wrong this time' sort of look. so obviously we're both primates even if we've never met.
I failed totally to get a photo of one of the ubiquitous parakeets that fly around the place shrieking like starlings but I did get one of a golden pheasant who looks just as stupid but much prettier that the kind I have to try not to run over at home on the roads.
Today I went to a funeral which was sad (though for various reasons, not least that he was 70 odd, it wasn't personally harrowing) and on the way home, detoured to see the white horse at Uffington. This is now on my list of places to go and see properly...for a start it has possibly the prettiest car park in the world. Well the prettiest I remember anyway.
Then the sun went down and I went home.

I've done in them flies!

But having started a post I've realised that the triumph of defeating a million flies with three spraytheroomshuthtedoorandrunawayquickly sessions has unhinged my mind. I did mention a certain amount of emptiness of the brain cells didn't I?
Well I'm fresh out of brain cell and inspiration so I'll post some pictures and bugger off to do some other cleaning and tidying stuff...all I'm fit for just now.

Whenever the sunsets got really splendid, we were in a hurry to get back to the lodge before gate closing time...at sunset. I'm not sure if we would have been left outside with those cuddly lions and leopards if we'd been late. The general feeling was your position at sunset was non-negotiable...gates shut! Anyway, I took a lot of blurred sunsets on the move. We must have been slowing down for something when I took this one !

A splendid male overlooking the antics of a group of assorted youngsters.



Serious cuteness! (to make up for photos of disgusting eating habits...though come to think of it, this could have been dinner later!)
All together now....Aaaw!

Oops, looks like they want us all on Beta Blogger

Since I got a message saying "your new blogger account is ready for you to switch". I never asked for a new blogger account. I feel pushed. Grrr.
Anyway, I think I used up all my adventurousness over the last few weeks and how much stuff do I have to move if I switch? I'm not up for virtual housemoving at the moment! Blogger must wait.
Well anyway, peace reigns over here. Barney has been for the weekend and gone back to Kew and on Wednesday I'm spending the day there (this means I have to organise a dog visitor....dog may be getting his dinner/walks/cuddles at odd times but I expect he won't mind) The neigbours will probably pop in randomly if I ask them nicely.
The sun is in and out today. I'm trying to decide where to go (which has to include a post office and a bank and somewhere to take pictures. ) This is causing me some brainstrain and in fact I now realise that far from concentrating the mind, blogging is using it up.
Before it runs out completely....

The savannah early in the morning

A BIG YAWN after a good dinner

And then the other guests get their shares

And some giraffes, no doubt astonished by the table manner of carnivores...but quite above it all.
Got to go now . Hope the sun is shining on you too :)

Oh what a lov-er-ly day

Well today started less than punctually so I was a bit cross with myself as I set off in the gorgeous sunshine to Oxford. And Oxford is a brilliant place to go via the Park and Ride but not so good to get into by car. Needs must though - even if it was only me driving and I am not the devil - since Frangelita needed me to be parked near the bus station. (because she had a heavy portfolio to dispose of).
Things more than merely looked up though almost at once..as after parking near where I thought the bus station ought to be I called Fran on the mobile to say where exactly is the bus station and she said don't move, I can see you, just let me get of the bus....and I turned round to see a bus drawing up beside me, literally, and Fran getting out of it! Looking like a million dollars all got up for a job interview.
Then we went to the market on the off chance that we'd be able to find The Beep at his stall! And we did, after a lot of peering surreptitiously at stall holders with antiques (and particularly with mirrors on their stalls:). It was momentarily a bit scary when we definitely identified him...chatting to next door...we hadn't warned him we were coming...he might be horrified...too busy to give us the time of day...Oh my goodness, I thought, what have we done!
Ridiculous. Just as charming and funny and likeable as his blog...more even. What a delightful man and how lovely to have met him at last:)*

After all this excitement,Fran and I had a lovely lunch, we exchanged Kenya/Thailand presents (mine is a lovely blue and turquoise, Thai silk scarf) she had an interview, I did a bit of shopping and bought a cheap SD card for my camera (hope it works) and then we met a friend of hers for coffee (originally planned to be in Blackwells....we feel that Oxford is over-endowed with Blackwells shops...there's a music shop, a bookshop and an art/poster shop...so which one has the coffee shop? The one that doesn't take cards of course. We went to Waterstones). Then Fran caught her bus and so ended a tremendous day.

So, what kind of bird do you substitute for lamps on a lamp post?

An Very Important Pigeon of course.


Coffee and sunset at Waterstones (sorry, crap picture but I had to embarrass my daughter and inconvenience several shoppers to get it so it had to be posted)

And did I mention leopards? After dinner OK?
See them now?


After chasing each other around the top of the thorn tree for a while, these two young males posed for us before turning into spotted black and yellow water and flowing down the tree trunk to run off into the savannah.
I am totally in love with leopards.

*The Beep and I have history of near but not quite achieved blog-meets! I'll definitely be back Beep. Shall I bring a coffee and a bun next time :)

Unpleasant - very

We have a plague.
The room which used to be eldest's, in the roof, is a beautiful room all in pale silver grey, turquoise, white and black with angles and corners and sloping ceilings in all directions.
When Eldest lived there (and it was a steaming nest of corruption and old socks and 1/2 empty cups and coke cans) it used to harbour flies. They would cluster in all the nooks and crannies and all the folds of the curtains and die occasionally and lie on the floor and bed and the tops of cupboards and shelves. Ugh!
Naturally I thought, when it was all cleaned up and fresh and nice it wouldn't attract the flies any more. Naturally, I thought the attraction was the festering, fusty gunk and moulder that belonged to eldest.
Anyway the other night I toyed with the idea of sleeping up there. Only guests get to sleep there now and occasionally eldest and his partner. So I went up with the idea of turning on the heating and shaking out the bed and checking it out. What did I find but a million flies, clustered as of old in all the places they used to cluster. When I turned on the light they rose (or fell) in a sleepy, sluggish swarm and buzzed. Some of them fell to the floor and lay upside down szzzing softly and helplessly. When I drew the curtains, they were in black seething clumps in every fold. I tell you 'Lord of the Flies' wasn't in it! I have to admit I uttered a screech and fled, vowing to return with the hoover today.
Regrettably the hoover isn't adequate (I'd need an industrial powered machine with a huge scooped extension) so I've searched the house for some fly killer. We have crawling insect spray (ants coming in through the kitchen window) but nothing for winged insects (because I dislike spraying chemical things into the air that we share with the dog and cats. And it seems slightly like bad karma to kill insects wholesale, however nasty they are). So tonight they'll be up there like some sort of beastly multiple monster....And now I'm squawking like a startled hen every time a hair tickles the back of my neck! Urrrr*#!


Here be leopards.

What do you mean you can't see them?
More tomorrow :)

Films and feathers

Finally after much procrastination and explanation, Barney has got the camcorder film he took in Kenya onto the TV (he borrowed the camcorder from his partner). Even more impressively, he's got the TV to put it on a DVD. (He's the one who watches TV and I hate being left with 3 remotes and inadequate instructions on how to record programmes so I take the wimp's route on TV technology and say I don't know how to do it. It's true too, I don't)

The film is alternately great and ...um...puzzling. Contains moments of extreme embarrassment for me (eg, dancing round in a big circle with other tourists and a crowd of extremely beautiful and black ladies in the Samburu village. Me wearing silly hat, red, sweaty face and flapping shirt and them wearing gorgeous blue and red swathes of cool looking stuff and stunning jewellery) (Oh alright...there's me complete with silly hat).Also contains moments of extreme excitement and wow! animal stuff. As it should.
So last night we watched that and squeaked and muttered all over again. And tonight I watched 'The Fellowship of the Ring' and went Aaw and Ooh and clutched my cushion at the exciting bits all over again. Barney went to sleep, woke up to mutter "why aren't we watching Planet Earth" and went back to sleep again before I could say "you'd only sleep through it".

Last week Barney should have been working at Kew Gardens but when he and partner arrived on Monday morning the scaffolders hadn't finished scaffolding the building. Not deterred much, B and Partner started work on an accessible bit only to be stopped by the arrival of the Queen's Palaces official who said “Oh no you can't possibly work till the scaffolding has all been erected and checked and passed”. So rather crossly they came home and had to spend a week doing nothing (you can't really go from one thatch to another at a moment's notice...customers like to be warned when you're arriving and don't much like you going away again in the middle of a job).
Anyway it's been quite nice. We rarely spend time together at home and we pottered around like an old married couple doing our separate things and occasionally having a cup of tea or a meal together.
On the other hand, I'm now expecting to be alone for the next week or two with no mealtimes to be back for and few other commitments. Which quite honestly I'm really looking forward to.
I have a few plans...possible blog meet or two, a visit to Oxford, a trip to Reading and definitely lots of photo trips.
I may tidy the house.
I may even tidy some of the bits of garden that (like the dog) seem to prefer next door to here.
I may play my fiddle at unreasonable hours.
I may even try to achieve some dawn photography.
I may visit some friends.
Oh at some point I'm going to visit Kew and get in with the boys for free and wander round the gardens.
Ho ho!

Oh, feathers...well we went on a boat trip round Lake Naivasha to see birds. There were lots of birds and also some rather close encounters
Of the large wet kind

And seagulls

and African kingfishers

and Pelicans

and cormorants and herons

flowers in the hotel gardens

And people enjoying a day out by the lake

All quite idyllic.

I've been tagged...first time ever!

I have the opportunity to say eight things about myself. Hmmm

1. When I was very small I fell out of the moving car. Apparently I said quite matter-of-factly “Dig. I fell out of the car”. Nobody knows to this day what I meant by it.
2. I’m going to have a bacon sarnie and coffee for breakfast.
3. I try not to generalise but - I don’t give a shit who/what you worship and whether you wear a veil or any other kind of headwear. If, however, you blow, or cut*, people up I consider you a shit whatever sort of head gear you wear. (I think that goes for agreeing with blowing up people up too and definitely goes for ordering people to blow people up). I may consider you a damaged, sensitive, oppressed, brainwashed, stupid, helpless, compromised human being too but I will always respect you enough to consider you able to make a choice. So if you blow people up (etc) I still think you’re a shit. Oh and in case I haven’t made myself clear, I don’t give a shit for any reasons you may think you have for blowing up etc etc.
4. I am so lucky I can’t believe it. If you enjoy life at all you are so lucky too. Should us lucky people feel guilty? I don’t think so. Just give a bit back if we can.
5. I like my tea and coffee in a bone china mug thank you and the bacon sarnie was delicious Oh and I forgot to say, if you do wear veils or other unusual headgear I won’t assume you’re either a nun or a terrorist…after all, whenever I go to hot places I wear funny hats and all my children wear evil looking sunglasses.
6. I weighed around 8 stone till I got my first full time job, 9 stone till I had children, 10 stone till I gave up smoking for 3 years and 11 stone till now. (with some latitude during pregnancy - 12 stone and spreading feet - and during the last five years - 11 and ½ stone - and during two or three years when I was depressed - 9 and ½ stone). Depending on what life changing things happen next I expect to weigh at least 12 stone after I die (if only for a day or two).
7. I used to get nearly all my clothes from charity shops. Um, now I seem to get them from proper shops…I may have to start donating to charity in some other way.
8. When I was very small (but not saying ‘dig’, as a general comment on life and events, any more) I was sent to bed for my after-lunch rest and something large, fast and black ran across my pillow. I ran screaming, all the way back up miles of tall dark corridor and cried “MUMMYDADDY THERES A HUGE SPIDER IN MY BED AND IT’S ENORMOUS AND BLACK AND IT’S GOT A HUNDRED LEGS!!!!!!!!!” Daddy said “a hundred legs? Are you sure?”

So 14 or so years later I was walking along a corridor at home and I SAW A HUGE SPIDER WITH 100 LEGS running away from me down the corridor. It was the same spider…exactly… in every detail…down to the four legs and the little round ears and bright eyes and the long tail.

And I'm supposed to tag someone else. Anyone want to be tagged?**

*Obviously I don't mean surgeons who cut people up as long as they're careful and respectful.
**Frangelita...She's a good egg :)

Thelassa! Thelassa!

Was what the greek runner allegedly cried, weeping tears of weariness and relief/despair as he reached the view of the sea on nearing the end of the first ever marathon. And thelassa thelassa was what me and Mum and Dad used to cry excitedly on catching a first glimpse of the sea at Torcross after the interminable journey (no such things as motorways then) from Croydon.
I tried it once or twice when me and Barney went to Greece. He didn't really get it :(
When we were in Greece I found that a lot of the signs were almost meaningful because of a well spent youth reading myths and legends and heroes and monsters (in the unexpurgated, old fashioned translations from the greek). when my fiddle teacher went to Italy, she found she could read a lot of the road signs because they were all musical terms.
Anyway. I keep wanting to cry thelassa thelassa!! meaning 'the sun the sun'!!! Wrong.
Greek for 'the sun!!!' anyone?*

Well it's out and doing lovely stuff in the woods where I went yesterday, clutching tripod and camera and assorted accessories. You know it's a miracle I ever get to take a picture the amount of fussing and faffing and dropping stuff I do!

On another hand (not full of bits and pieces of camera stuff) whenever I go away to look after ailing relatives I think "I must get a lap-top" Then I think "silly, it's only for a week or two and it's not as if it's going to happen all that often" Wrong again. A week or two is an aeon and it's happened at least five times in the last 3 years. OK. I must get a lap-top. I must remember that I must get a lap-top. Before sickness strikes the family again. With any luck it'll be like hanging the washing out makes the rain fall and leaving the washing unhung because it looks like rain makes the sun come out. And nipping into the shop across the road when you're totally fed up with waiting at the bus stop bringing the bus immediately (just as you reach the cashier).
Perhaps it's because I keep forgetting that I need a lap-top that the family get ill! It's my duty to get one asap to preserve my relatives from sickness and misfortune. Good, that's settled. Eldest, what sort of lap-top should I get? when are you next coming to visit? Bring ideas and suggestions and take your old Mum shopping :)

* would it be Helios? I think it might.
Helios! Helios! Time to go out with the camera :)