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

Well dear SD,

Let me be the first to say that I hope you had a super time. As I missed your posting last night.

Because....Oh I am going to write about it in my journal, but I had sixty years taken off my life for an hour last night. It was transportingly beautiful and wonderful. !
Which lake did you visit? The area where we lived in Harare was called Borrowdale - although it did not look in the least like the original. Probably was named by a homesick "Lakerite"!

Much affection.
AlspRan80

Here I am, dry again!!! The weather has been wonderful today....all last week it tried to pour every day. However, it didn't spoil the holiday - but it would have been so much more splendid with a bit of sunshine, and my photos would have been better too! Tomorrow the Real World intrudes, as I clamber onto the scales. Yes, the food was excellent......
Time, too, to face the Real World in the garden. Who on earth has been round planting weeds? They're far more spectacular than my legitimate, so to speak, plants, which show a tendency to go over, so I must do some dead-heading when I've done the ironing from last week, the washing from this week, the ironing from this week, the cleaning from the Napoleonic Wars, have a Girls' Day Out with no 2 daughter......get the picture? I suppose I should also try to fit in the odd 15 calorie meal....but that means shopping! Backson, as C. Robin and Wol used to say.
Dig ..she lied..

Oh, LadyDig, I do SO know the feeling. I have a list of things 'to do' as long as your arm! I am getting down them slowly, but today is so very humid it is sapping what little energy I have.

Glad you had a nice holiday. Have you the means to show us any photos? - I am not sure if you have a dig. camera or not. I am getting so much fun out of taking photos without having to wait for development or pay for printing, only to find they were rubbish Wonderful

Websailor

Oh my dear friend,

i thought of you often and hoped that the weather was treating you kindly.
15 calorie meals. What an invention. it must be about one slice of dry bread. !!

Your garden has weeds which grow better than flowers. Most gardens do. But english weeds are very beautiful.. that gardener - is it Diana Raven was giving a very good talk on the Tv. last night and showed us some quite beautiful weeds. Still I hope thyat you have managed to straighten the spines of your pukka plants by dead heading them. do you have dahlias, roses and delphiniums in your garden? I have just bought a magnificent yellow calla (Arum) lily and it really looks super on my balcony.
I am taking a period of retirement frin thuis websitel I really have to get on with some other tasks which I have neglected.
So am now burrowing into my 32year old copy of Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice merleau Ponty which I studied when in south Africa. It was marvellous how it woke up my brain cells. I have also had a wonderful medical where there doctor informed me that she had never seen a person of my age with such a magnifcient blood (picture)!! She assures me that dementia and altzhiemers hold no fears for me. !! thank goodness. I hope she is right.

Ihope we shall be able to talk to one another occasionally until I can come back into full circulation.

With affection

Christiane AlsoRan80

Nite nite Christiane,

Just about to do my badger diary so I won't keep you.



Websailor

Well, I've done the washing - at least the machine has (!). There seems to be more roning than meets my approval, but I'll just havce to find an hour or two of Radio 4 and grit my teeth. The weather is so humid and exhausting, I'd probably be better taking the iron into the gard..,er, wild-life meadow sounds better than bomb-site.
As for photographs, yes, I can email them, when I've selected those which make me out to be a female Armstrng-Jones. Could you send them on to Christiane? They might cause a relapse of course.....

Hello, Swam!! What great news from your doctor. I'm sooooo glad!!
We got home too late to see Sarah (not Diana!) Raven, whom I respect and admire enormously, but fortunately was able to download the programme with iPlayer and watch it last night. What a splendid campaign. It made me want to call a village meeting immediately. I'm not surprised the neighbours fell in with her suggestions though. She's quite irresistible!

Enjoy your sabbatical, won't you!
Dig.

Oh, that would be nice LadyDig, and I will certainly pass them on to Christiane.

You should sign up with Flicker and put your photos on there. You can do it free and it is a good way to safeguard photos you don't want to lose if camera or pooter go kaput!

I am really enjoying taking photos, though today has been abysmal - humid, thick mist at 7am, rain at lunchtime and since. Woe is me, I couldn't mow the lawn, I was so upset so I have done a load of other things, some creative, which I really enjoy.

Websailor

Hi Madame Dig - the ironing lady. !!

My goodness, I cannot iron for toffee = why dnt you get clothes that do not need ironing!!.

Have i told you about how popular I made myself with my maternal grandmother. When visiting her in Aix- en- Provence on one of our biennial visits from South Africa I asked her, in my five year old innocence why she did not iron her face. I do not think that she ever forgave me for that remark.

I await the photographs with much pleasure but wonder why you cannot send them directly to me?
My beautiful yellow arum is loving the hot weather we had yesterday but deeply saddened by the gale we are now encounte8ing. !!

Have just been listening to the Lockerbie disaster. Yesterday it was te titanic. soon I shall be too frightened to go in a lift. !! What magnificent detecctives these people are.

with affectrion

ChristianeAR80

Hi Ws.

I wonder how on earth you manage my dear. You go to bed late - you are up at least three times pernihgt reporting on the nefarious goings on in yur garden by your nocturnal visitors, and yet you are bright and perky all day. Marvellous energy you have.

Now you go to beddy byes and stay safely tucked in. tell the foxes to come during the day - and as for Brock nad his family. really their table manners are dreadful.

Only teasing my - I love hearing about your family. but they keep you very busy.

Christiane AR80

Finished the ironing!!!!!! What a mammoth task. Why didn't I do it before we went away? Answer: idleness, of course. I rather enjoy mindless jobs, as the brain in neutral can drift wheresomever! But why do poeple call when I'm in the thick of it? But it's nice to have people willing to call!
The Master has put his hearing-aid in a Safe Place. Anybody familiar with the syndrome? I've looked in the fridge, the waste-bins, the compost bucket. He's moved all the furniture, but it appears to have left the country. Suggestions? His anguish is dreadful to watch. He'll have to buy another one (then it'll turn up, of course) but the thought makes him quite pale. Ski-ing, they call it, I believe.

Dig

Pockets, drawers, underneath towels, unmentionables, letters, bills?

Pots, pans?

Among the cutlery?

Cups, mugs, pitchers?

Pencil case?

Top of a shelf?

AlsoRan80,

I am a night owl anyway. I come alive about 10pm! As for energy I don't have a lot, but if it is something interesting I am doing, adrenaline keeps me going. The night time checks on the badgers are in passing, as I wake as a matter of necessity, if you get my drift!!

The foxes often come in the day but the badgers never! The earliest is about 8.30pm and the nearest to daylight is at about 4.30am.

I am doing lots of creative stuff at the moment which is vastly more satisfying than housework, and at the moment there is too much rain to do much in the garden.

PS I can arrange with LadyDig to send photos direct to you if you give me permission.

Websailor

Oh, LadyDig,

I feel for the Master, I really do. I have been doing more of that than ever these last weeks. I am re-organising my office, and trying to straighten my house, then I forget where I have put things - it is so frustrating!

The strange thing is whatever he is looking for is probably under his nose - Er!!! It couldn't be in his ear could it

Websailor

Evenin' all. You're not being very imaginative! I've looked in all those places, as well as the compost bucket. Have you tried groping through peelings, grounds, and the rest? Not to be attempted in one's Sunday best. Poetry? Hardly.

Webbie, we don't seem to get the rain here until I've done my 2 hours and watered the wretched plot. That seems to be the cue for a downpour. It's been very windy today, which stirs up the seraphic temper, reminding me of hens who get so agitated when their feathers are blown inside out!

Titania, how are you? How's life among the elite? Still enjoying it?

Time to be the Little Woman again; talk later.
Diggin' again.

Dear SD.

Please tell Your Master that past a certain age one MEVER puts things in a SAFE PLACE.

One always puts things in the SAME place.

I am as deaf as a doorpost without my hearing aids. I have two pairs - one to put in at night when I am sleeping (I feel my deafness inensely at night funnily enough? and the other good pair to wear during the day. Those are new and most dreadfully expensive - I have a vast overdraft to pay for them. so I guard them very preciously.

When I exchange my hearing aids at night I have a little box for two hearing aids, and as I take out one I take the hearing aid of that ear out and put in the night one and so on!. I hope you get the sequence. I find that I have to do things literally by rote otherwise I forget. I also find that one HAS to train one's mind to finish one task before even thinking about another otherwise my mind cannot take the strain.!!

Oh I remember the days when I couold think of five things at once, do three of them and remember to do the other two as soon as one had finished the three. Those halcyon days are gone forever I fea!!

Now I have to do ONe thing at a time.
So do not go burrowing around in those horrid places any more. If it is gone it is gone. but do ask him to take it as a lesson well learnt. It is simply dreadful not being able to hear. Deafness is quite the least understood and most maddening disability to others that one can have. Besides if he has another hearing aid made thenhe will have a spare when his old one turns up. that would be marvellous. and keep it in the SAME PLACE - not in a SAFE PLACE.oNE FORGETS.

Anyway perhaps St. Anthony mighthelp. !!

Great to talk to you. I am now going to watch TV,. I think. but I shall probably fall asleep.

Much affection. did you have a good time in the Lake District. WS is going to give you my address so that you can send me the photos.

Christiane AR80

You're so right! Himself has never been good at Being Organised. A sight of the floors in sitting- and dining-rooms would tell you that. As for the garage, come time to afford the car some shelter.....

I agree about deafness. It can't be seen, so doesn't appear as a disability, and everyone, even N&D, tend to regard it as a sign of mental challenge. Dearly as I love him, I still have to make a conscious effort not to resent repeating myself for the nth time! For some things, you'll agree, weren't worth saying the FIRST time, even pearls of wisdom from Dig(!)

I'm still persuading him to order a replacement; even if the original turns up, which I doubt, he'll then have a reserve. Then he'll likely lose the other one.......

Reply to your email is incubating....
Dig

Hi SD,

I have "lost" about three answers to emails today. There must be a spell on my replies. I shall send you my reply by other means.

With affection

Christiane
AR80

LadyDig,

I am facing possible deafness with my other half. I haven't as yet weighed up whether he is losing his hearing, or whether he just 'cocks a deaf'n' at his missus!! Certainly we have very different requirements with regard to the volume of TV, radio and other sounds, and I can hear things he can't.

I am certainly getting very frustrated at having to say everything twice, sometimes three times. He says I don't speak clearly, but no-one else has a problem. The frustration comes because he won't do anything about it, burying his head in the sand the way he did over his lung condition.

As you say some things are barely worth saying once, but we might spend the time not talking at all otherwise!!

I hope your master's aids turn up soon. I am sure they will.

Websailor

Dear WS

Do read my first reply to SD/ Perhaps that will convince him to get a hearing aid.

|I think we must both have been posting at the same time because I "lost" my letter when I tried to Post it! You obviously have a priority line. !!

Being deaf really is a horrid disability. and I must admit I suffer as much as your spouse.I always think of poor Beethoven. It must have been absolutely awful to have written all that sublime mustic and never to have been able to hear it.
Can't you persuade him to have his hearing tested for your sake? I am sure he would agree. It must be maddening to live with someone who is deaf - as I have been since I was 23 years old. It is not a disability which engenders any sympathy - only irritation sadly.

~With affection
Christiane AR80