h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yay, I'm a taid (grandad) yet again and to a little girl this time. We knew it was going to be a girl since the parents asked to be told the sex after the scan. The mother is a pink freak; pink colour and not Pink singer, so everyone's been buying pink things. Pink clothes mainly and tons of them as well as a pink stroller/buggy for later on.
I don't know what we would have done if it had turned out to be a boy after all. All the receipts I had are long gone and the same is probably true for everyone else. We might have ended up with a very confused boy.
I've never had daughters so a girl is a whole new experience for me.

Congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter.

Treat her with gentleness, love and affedtion and she will reward you with lyalty affection and adulation. !!

well done to the mother and father of your new granddaughter

Christiane
AlsoRan80

There are enough confused boys in the world already.

Enough confused people as well.

Thank you Christiane.
I visited the Tate gallery (Liverpool's Albert dock) today to see the William Blake exhibition.
I'm afraid that most of his works left me cold but it was worth seeing
in relation to Milton
and for it's place in art's continuity.
The Twentieth Century exhibition was very good with some very familiar works on display,
Picasso, Degas, Moore, Pollock, Warhol, plus less well known artists.
Too much to see in a viewing really and I was getting visual overload by the end.

All this gave me the excuse to call in for a cup of tea and see my grandaughter on the way home.

Dear Grandpa!!

Wonderful excuse to meet your granddaughter!!

Sounds a great exhibition. I remember the very first time I went to the Orangerie in Paris. There was a Degas exhibition. One of the ballet dancers was so life like that I stepped up close to "feel" the canvas. I was startled out of my wits when two attendants virtually dragged me by the arms and pulled me away. I never tried to get up too close again.
I love the blue period of Picasso, but all those one-eyed women leave me cold. I like Monet and Matisse- I literally adore van Gogh, !! and if I remember correctly I think I also like Willima Blake. does he not paint very peaceful scenes!!

I went to the Prado in Madrid and I came out totally horrified at the things that I saw. There were pitcures by - oh my goodness my short term memory has deserted me. sorry. If I remember it I shall write it down immediately in my diary. But the pictres of the Spanish civil War were so frightening that I was quite horrified. But I remember seiing a wonderful spanish artist in an exhibition in London. Amd actia;;u ot was a dosaply which came from Russia so his pictures must have been bought by a russian collector.

Go well Grandpa of a lovely granddaughter,

sincerely,

an old gran with nine grandchildren six grand daughters and three grandsons and two great grand daughters and three great grandsons. !! Honestly. I give up. They are like rabbits.
and I remember the birthdays of hardly any of them. !!

Apologies Grandpa. for all the errors. !!

apart from being long past my sell-by date, my brain stops functioning at midday. I should NOT approach my computer in the afternoon.

CME
AR80

Were any of the paintings in the Prado by Goya?

I'd be surprised if there weren't any.

Degas' Little Dancer was the first exhibit you saw when you walked in.
I was quite captivated by it and snapped it with my cameraphone.
I snapped Picasso's Weeping Woman too and would have taken more photos
but I'm never sure if it's allowed.

I visited the Centre Pompidou a few years back and that was a cultural feast.
I loved the whole visual aspect of the building; the French must be proud of it.
One of the exhibits that stuck in my mind was entitled Art is Dead.
Judging by some of the works I see these days, I suspect that was quite
prescient.

Hi Paul

You are a stranger. Have you been away?

Yes there were certainly paintings by Goya. but. if my memory servies - and at the moment it is doing very strange things, I do not think I liked his work very much. !. I still cannot remember the name of the Spanish painter whose work I saw in London when it was on loan from a Russian Art gallery. It was one of those Spanish names which have got either a silent or a guttural consonant in them. Wow. I wonder if it was Velasquez erhaps!! I am now going to start writing about how to retrieve your "lost" memory after a stroke.!!

One should be able to do it. However, there is a problem. I am writing down things as I remember them, and then cannot read my handwriting. !

G.O.I..N.F.S.

(Getting old is not for sissies!!

One actually has to have a tremendous amount of courage. It is quite frightening when one spends ages trying to remember what one has forgotten.!

Today I was very pleased because I have just had SKY installed and quite by accident I found the South Africa TV service.

I was overjoyed and as I had spent ages trying to remember the old name of Namibia, was thrilled to hear it called Namaqualand. then I saw the o'Kiep Copper company, and remembered that the mighty Orange river separated the northern Cape Province from Namibia. And then I remember that Port Nolloth was at the mouth of the Orange river. and finally I remembered Etosha Pan as the magnificent game Park faily near windhoek when I had watched two lionesses stalking a herd of Springboks and I had hated it so much that I had sat on the floor of the car - obviously my husband was driging it. !!

Now!. Was that not a marvellous example of one's memory coming back.? Because that happened this morning and I still remember it.nearly twelve hours later. !! !!
(I have taken the precaution of writing it to you just in case I forget again. !!

go well

Christiane
AR80

Cher Granpere,

What a lovely letter. Please forgive me if I reply tomorrow. It has taken me ages to edit my reply to Paul.

Thank you again.

Christiane
Ar80.

Just before *my* memory shuts down for the night, where do you live, Grandad Mista? We live in Liverpool but I thought you were... somewhere else?
Would be lovely to meet you in the Tate sometime, and I have a little girl of my own you can practice fussing over

Have I been away, AlsoRan?

Honey, I am *always* away. My mind wanders constantly. Even when I'm here, I'm somewhere else. There are too many places to get lost in thought, and too little time.

Hi my very dear Grandad.

It is wonderful to be able to be here but also elsewhere. It is a gift to be cherished, and nurtured and cared for with much gentleness and a great deal of reverence.

Have you noticed that something very minor can initiate this mental transfer* i find it most agreeable!. The smell of pine needles carpeting the ground immediately transfers me to being a sixteen year old at University and enjoying the remembered "sacred" place with a great deal of emotion and joy.! and yet - here I am still in my wheelchair. !Where naturally I am quite happy as I have no pain.

Which of course is another transference of self.

I wonder why. of course I do not. Transference occurs the minute I inhale that delicious fragrance !

Thank you for starting my day off so beautifully.

Christiane

* There is a word for this mental physical removal of self but for the life of me I cannot remember it. I have tried to look it up in my beautiful Thesaurus but without without success.

I was transported to a delightful garden yesterday while walking in a shopping mall. The Horticultural Society had put up a display in the mall, and little expense had been spared. They had flowering fruit trees, pansies in full bloom, lilies about to bloom, grape hyacinths and narcissus and many other plants, all neatly planted in woodbark mulch. It smelled divine, and I felt as if I were inanother world.

Isn't it strange how smells can be so evocative, the sense must connect with
a deep layer of the subconcious. Sometimes a smell can place me in a vivid
flashback of a time and place. Paraffin (kerosene)always brings back a
memory of being a small child standing in the village ironmongers.
Tomatoes take me back to visiting my dad in the greenhouse where he worked.(market garden)
Channel No.5 brings back memories best kept private.

I most often am "somewhere else" Elly.
But mostly I can be found here.
http://tinyurl.com/asllz8
Company at the Tate would be very nice, and I need all the practice
I can get at fussing a girl.

No muss, no fuss.

What a splendiferous treat I have just had.

Thank you so much,

It took me a little while to get the hang of it, but what wonderful photographs and what wonderful country.

The only name I recognised was Llududno
Merci- Obrigada - Gratia

A thousand thank you(s) for the lovely walk and the most beautiful scenery. It is quite totally and unutterably beautiful.

That's Wales, AR1. I'm feeling so jealous. It's true what they say, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. I do miss open spaces!

Let me know when you're next coming to our fair city, Mista, and I shall try my best to meet you at the Tate. We'll have a mini-meet!

Night night one and all!
Elly