Journal Entries
Petrichor
Posted Oct 24, 2013
I was rereading Terry Pratchett's 'The Fifth Continent' in the bath last night when two things occurred to me:
1) I shall have to stop taking baths when alone in the house. Arthritic bones mean it takes nearly ten minutes to get out afterwards and it feels dangerous. So, although loth to give up a minor pleasure of 60 years standing, I shall have to save the very splendid bath salt stuff my daughter in law sent me until she is over here again.
2) Surely Terry Pratchett knows the word Petrichor for the smell of ground after the rain? The last couple of pages hinge on a formerly useless word being passed from one aboriginal to another until it finally rains and there is a use for it.
So I looked the word up and it was invented by a couple of Australian scientists about 30 years ago. Perhaps Pratchett is pulling another of his double bluffs as the book is (sort of) about Australia. A minor pleasure of reading him is getting to feel superior when you recognise the references.
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Latest reply: Oct 24, 2013
Nemo me impune ......
Posted Oct 20, 2013
I was dong my library volunteering stint this afternoon when a teenager and her mother came to ask if the computer answered questions. "Probably," said I, "what do you want to know?"
"Well, do you speak Latin?"
(I know this was once a Roman settlement, but how old do they think I am?)
"Yes" *
"Well what does 'fecit' mean?"
"He, she or it made..."
"See, I told you she'd know" !
*I failed O level Latin in 1959
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Latest reply: Oct 20, 2013
In praise of kaftans
Posted Oct 15, 2013
When I lived in Cameroon I had three tie-dyed kaftans with gold embroidery round the neck, one of which I took into hospital with me when I went for tests to track the reasons for a high white cell count.
After four days, I had read all my books several times over and was grumbling both at the lack of visitors and whoever was moving heavy furniture on the floor above. A young man came in to take my blood pressure. When the noise increased he dived under the bed with the cuff still attached and therefore I dived with him. My angry expostulation drew,"Mais madame, il y a un coup". There was no floor above. The noise was heavy gun fire from the nearby rebel barracks.
Nothing to do but wait it out. No lockers meant no clothes and no money. Two days later a well-built gent stood at the foot of my bed:
"Morning, m'dear. Things seem to be quietening down a bit. I've got the children at the embassy. Do you want to come and join us or stay here and find out what's wrong with you?"
He had climbed in over the wall, but managed to find someone prepared to let us out as I couldn't have managed that in a kaftan.
Out to the embassy through several roadblocks all acknowledging the flag on the ambassadorial rolls and the presence of an unkempt barefoot woman in a purple kaftan.
I wore the same garment for the 70s street party this year
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Latest reply: Oct 15, 2013
Beds I have fallen out of
Posted Oct 13, 2013
I landed up on the bedroom floor in the middle of last night, wrapped in blankets, so not much damage. My current bed is a hard double mattress on wooden slats. Wrought iron bedstead with pseudo posts, draped not with curtains but with purple and red saris.
I last fell out of a rural chief's bed in Cameroon (he wasn't in it)That was sweet-smelling herbs and straw on a bedstead made of branches, about 1984.
I fell out of a high hospital bed in Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead when I was sixteen (after jaw surgery)A very large black nurse picked me up and made me cocoa. She came from Kenya and was the first black person I had ever met. Really cuddly.
I fell out of my grandmother's bed when I was recovering from chicken-pox, aged 5. She had a feather mattress (to be shaken and turned every day) with big fluffy feather pillows and an eiderdown. I had a pretty nightdress made of parachute silk. Come to think of it, I wonder if the original owner of the parachute had fallen out of anything.
Then there was the time I fell under a bed.. more of that another day.
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Latest reply: Oct 13, 2013
The rain it raineth every day
Posted Oct 12, 2013
It's all my fault. I collared the very elusive window cleaner on Thursday and got the best part of three months grime removed from my windows. I have old-fashioned sashes and until recently used to sit on the windowsill with my legs inside and my body outside to clean them. Now employ what my grandmother used to call a 'proper man'.
Didn't even have time to take a line of washing in before the downpour started, but the extra rinse in the rain means my underwear smells lovely.
Went into Grimsby yesterday to collect the duvet I'd left to be cleaned some weeks ago and cleverly left my umbrella on the bus. I have at least six more in a Chinese umbrella stand next to the door, but this was a good smart black with white Chinese writing all over it.
I haven't had to water the new plants that an acquaintance grew from seed for me, but it has now been raining for 48 hours non-stop. I feel a bit like Christopher Robin.
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Latest reply: Oct 12, 2013
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