The sky is bright blue today and there is still frost on the grass. It is a lovely sparking winter’s day. Dennis the Squirrel just punched a wood pigeon off the bird table.
Jambo
Firstly I apologise for misspelling ‘fairy’ in the previous post. Dyslexics rule KO..
Secondly, I apologise for the week of silence. I was hiding out in south Mombassa and didn’t want to bang on about the sea being bright turquoise-blue and the water so warm you could hardly feel it when you slipped into the pool; about the sand being silky and white and how there were, each glorious, sunlit morning, enormous plates of fresh mangos, paw paws and pineapples to go with your bacon and eggs. I didn’t want to upset you with stories of fantastical, multi-coloured fish and corals, gentle whispering palms and huge skies that made the Bounty adverts look like Cillet Bang ads…..nope, I didn’t think it would be very nice of me to whitter on about the smell of almond oils from the spa rooms, the hibiscus flowers arranged on the pillows each evening or the far off sweet smell of rain on the wind. I just thought it wouldn’t be kind.
Fairy Tales
I am watching a squirrel watching a very black cat watching a very oblivious blackbird in my garden. The squirrel, whom I shall call Dennis although it’s not his real name, is a bit of a yob. He nicks everything on my bird table and I am sure I have seen him trying to break into my back door when he thinks I can’t see him.
Discombobulation
I am feeling discombobulated. This is partly because I am trying to watch old CSI (forensic porn for pathologists), write a presentation for a job interview on Wednesday and ignore a creepy cold that has scratched the back of my throat and is now sitting on my chest deciding whether or not to go in for the kill. Also partly, I fear, my default setting actually is ‘discombobulation’.
Giving Thanks
A hangover of this weight and magnitude is not easy to find. It needs to be sought with courage, commitment, care and dedication…it involves a great deal of work and nurturing, an undertaking not to be taken lightly. This one was come upon in an entirely approiate manner involving a dozen loons, a turkey and an onslaught of pies. Yes you guessed it..a thanksgiving thrash and a half.
Lost in Translation
I got a cab back from the station today because I was bit knackered and it was raining ..anyway I knew I was in for a long ride home when the driver sweetly asked me to join him in the front. I sighed as I clambered in knowing that this was going to be a man who liked to talk and indeed he did but not in English. No indeed, like many cabbies around the world he spoke that strange language ‘football’. I don’t speak football but I have picked up the basics and all I had to do was respond with the occasional ‘yeah…hopeless left foot’ and ‘Jose’s definitely a possibility’’, and the chap was happy. There was one sticky moment when, during a pause,I realised he had actually asked a question, but, and this is for any of you out there who don’t speak football, I remembered the one line that always gets a gentle sigh of appreciation. It is, and I have NO idea what it means, ‘well whatever they say, they don’t make ‘em like Arson anymore….’ . I like saying ‘Arson’ in public and it sends football speakers off into a dreamlike state and that lovely thing longed for in a taxi…silence.
Fire alarms and rain
I am sure you will be pleased to know that when the fire alarm went off at the gym this evening and the administrators were running up and down screaming at people to get out, I was standing starkers in the shower with my hair full of shampoo. Whereas one may have had vague fantasies (bought about by far too many bodice ripping novellas in ones youth) about being helped out of burning buildings by burly firemen, swooning and nubile (that would ‘one’ and not the firemen) actually being caught out in the shower at the gym with the smallest rather greying towel and no sense of humour is an entirely different thing.
Luckily the fire was a phoney and I, and all the people standing around the pool area, narrowly escaped being sent outside into the frosty rain in bare feet and no bloomers.
Emerald green
I am in the bad habit of rescuing chameleons.
In Zambia there is a creation myth about the time when God gave the gift of life to the chameleon and the gift of death to Kalulu the rabbit. They were sent with their gifts to the newly created young humans however the chameleon being indecisive and very vain became distracted and Kalulu sprinted past him ensuring humans were bought death first. The poor chameleon’s punishment were eyes that would forever look in two directions and he is now stuck looking into the past and future, never completing anything and never able to get home. How sad is that!
Getting Caned
Ok Ok crazy cat lady is doing better. To you, and you know who you are, who sounded a little nervous about my state of mind, I can honestly say worry not. Matina came back neither in a plastic baggie nor a Tupperware pot but in a beautifully crafted small wooden box that looked like it was full of jewellery- so I promise only WE will know I have a dead cat in my bedroom… (unless of course I go to pull out some earrings in the dark …)
I have just come back from London where we were doing the voice overs for the photo exhibition in December. There will be MP3 players with descriptions and information about each of our photos as well as Braille and a few tactile photos. Bill, the completely blind photographer, was interesting as he says that tactile photos are not much use to either sighted or non-sighted without very clear description. Just too complicated even for very gifted fingers used to Braille.
Stormy Weather
Well that is interesting…who’d have thought Benezeer ‘let them eat cake’ Bhutto would re-emerge from her silken web of exile as the ‘hero’ in all this…isn’t she still corrupt as all hell?
Ah well.. It’s a strange and stormy world today. Last night they were issuing flood warnings but desperate to ‘fox-it-up’ they inserted old footage, uncaptioned, of the 1953 floods in Netherlands which must have sent nervous children and the deaf rushing to the window to see if the waters were already rising up the back door with distressed men in clogs and the occasional shire horse bobbing past the windows… As it turned out nothing really got that wet. And anyway it would have flooded Lowerstoft…which is not exactly New Orleans. It is a car park, three post offices and a Morrisons.