 |
| What I missed |
Today is a Free Day, so to speak. I was supposed to go to Paris ,
but decided to cancel because of the atrocious weather – who knows whether I
would be able to come back in time for work next Monday? And anyway I need to be here to rescue my
scarf collection if my house blows down.
So I am having a day at home. I
don’t have to meet anyone or do any chores or shop – after all I am not
supposed to be here at all!
Of course I could have improvised and just Up & Done
Something, but I remembered the fun that eluded me during the recent power cut
and decided to have that fun now. So I
went to the shops for a newspaper (quite hefty, it being Saturday), and bought
not one but TWO!!! croissants (I ran out of coins but a nice fellow customer
gifted me 38 pence and restored my faith in humanity), made a largish pot of
coffee, and settled down for a morning of inactivity. And the radio stayed silent!
Marvellous amazing wonderful! I should do this more often. But there is always so much to do. Well today the world had to get on without
me, I did what Pascal suggested – just stayed at home and looked out of the
window! Except when I looked out of the
window I saw all the jobs that needed doing in the garden, and the fact that
the windows need cleaning badly, so I averted my eyes and looked elsewhere. I spent the day reading and sleeping and
musing about this that and the other, and indulged myself by composing these
musings.
Normally I try to honour my readers by writing carefully
penned little missives, not the slap-dash hit & run stuff found on so many
other blogs. But today is an exception,
and I wrote about everything and anything that came to mind. You have been warned!
 |
| What is just down the street |
Come on Baby Light my
Fire! I thought of that song when I
passed the fireplace in the Parlour this morning. It still contains the remnants of a fire from
over a week ago. Cleaning up after a
fire is hard work, and no fun whatsoever.
And before you can have another fire you have to clean up the mess from
the previous one! If you just build a
new fire on the debris left over from the old one you are asking for trouble,
and the fire will never burn very well, if at all. You’ll get a quick flash in the pan and then
it’s just dieing ambers. I wish people
thought of that before they started new relationships. Instead they hook up with someone new before
they have emotionally finished with their previous flame, and more often than
not punish the new love for the sufferings that were inflicted by the previous
one, leaving the new one to think, What did I do wrong? You didn’t do anything wrong, the previous
one did, and you just got punished for someone else’s misdeeds. Let the ambers die, clean out the grate real
good, and then light the fire!
 |
| Ain sakhri lovers figurine |
Female Genital
Mutilation. Kudos to The Guardian
for having taken this cause up big-time.
It is one of those topics that make me alternatively incandescent with
rage and deadly depressed – what sick perverted mind could dream up such an
utterly horrible practice? And lest one
thinks this is a male-oppressing-female issue, the ‘cutters’ are mainly old
women doing it to the female children. ‘Well,
we have to make a living’, one of them told The Guardian. Murderers and thieves might make the same
claim! And does anyone honestly think
that a young man wants to have a wife who shrinks away in fear of pain every
time he eyes her amorously, and has a massively increased chance of childbirth
complications and other health issues?
But the young men aren’t asked whether they want to marry a healthy or a
mutilated woman, any more than the girls whether they want to be cut. This isn’t men against women, this is an
establishment trying to control their young folk (boys are cut, too, though it
is nowhere near as mutilating). Apparently
in France they
managed to make serious inroads into this crime by checking all girls
periodically and hauling their parents to court if they are found to have been
mutilated. I hope the petition launched
by that amazing 17 year old young woman Fahma Mohamed will achieve the same
result in the UK .
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/52740
My Amazing
Perfume-Fish. I recently discovered
to my great sorrow that I am allergic to my favourite winter perfume, Ambre
Narguile. If I use it more than a few
times on the same spot my skin goes all red and pimply. It is probably the cinnamon in it – it smells
like hot apple pie with cinnamon, and is the most comforting smell imaginable
(also it goes well with Sunday roast dinner!).
What’s a woman to do? I tried
spraying it on to my clothes, rather than myself, but it doesn’t do the clothes
any good … I thought long and hard, and
decided to put the perfume onto a bit of cotton wool, cunningly concealed
inside a golden locket, which I would wear around my neck. Unfortunately most lockets have solid sides,
so no scent could escape from them. What
I needed was a locket with one solid side to rest against my body and shield it
from the - to me - toxic perfume fumes, and one perforated side to face the
world and let the scent escape. Would
you believe I went to every likely shop in town and couldn’t find what I was
looking for? Ebay it was! Still no luck, until I found a little hollow
goldfish. I am awaiting its arrival any
day now! The plan is to stuff its capacious
belly with cotton wool, dribble a bit of perfume onto it, and then add it to
the array of golden necklaces that adorn my upper torso. When the fish is warmed up by my body heat,
the perfume will vaporise and escape from its mouth - I really hope this
works!
 |
| This is quite tiny in real life! |
Talk text browse, the
moment you arrive! That’s what it
says on my Eurostar ticket. Are they
insane or something? Do they think I am
going all the way to Paris to talk
text and browse? I have friends to meet,
sights to see, scarves to buy, coffee to drink!
I send a quick text when I am safely on the train, if that, and after
that you’ll see me when you see me. I
still remember when I finally caved in seven years ago and rented a mobile
telephone everyone predicted I would wonder how I ever lived without one within
weeks. Well it didn’t happen. I went from a regular contract to pay-as-you
go as soon as my contract ran out, and lost three telephone numbers because I
use my mobile telephone so little (they take your number off you if you don’t
use it for three months!). For me a mobile telephone is for emergencies, and frankly I don’t have
all that many. At first I told a few
people about the mobile telephone, and they tried to call and left messages and
texts, and then got quite cross because there was no reply. ‘Well I haven’t been in France
for a while,’ I told them. ‘What’s that
got to do with anything?’ they said. ‘I
only use my mobile telephone to send texts to friends in Paris
telling them that I am safely on the train – what else do I need it for?’ Now I tell everyone I don’t have a mobile
telephone, it fits in with their notion of me as being quaintly old-fashioned
and saves me having to check the damn thing all the time. Yes, I am still using the same one I bought
seven years ago! Just e-mail me, OK?
 |
| Gare du Nord |
The Television
Harassment Brigade. Yup, they are at
it again. Many years ago, when I had just
moved into my little house, the letters started to come. Why wasn’t I paying my TV Licence? I wrote to them politely telling them that I
did not have a television set, and thought it was the end of the matter. It was no such thing! I kept getting increasingly threatening
letters, to which I replied with increasing asperity. Finally they gave up. But since then every other year or so they
start again. First their letters suggest
that I had just forgotten to pay my licence fee. Then they ask that I write to them and
explain myself. They threaten to visit
me and inspect the house for concealed television receivers (actually they’d
need a search warrant to do that). Right
now they are threatening me with court action.
After my initial bout with them, when I wrote them half a dozen letters,
I found out that I am under no obligation to communicate with them. They have to prove that I watch television,
and since they can’t do that (partly because their much quoted detector vans
don’t actually work, partly because I don’t watch television) I have nothing to
fear. But it is still extremely
irritating to be suspected of being a television watcher - I mean, of all the
insults!
Well, I have managed to waste the day pleasantly! It is amazing how long you can string out a
single newspaper if you put your mind to it, and take regular breaks for tea
and Facebook check-ups …
 |
| Ahhhhhhh....... |
