Flight Of The Conchords - The Humans Are Dead

This live version is funnier than the one on the TV series. 

Slough of Despond

Wading through the black slime of one of my periodic depressions at the moment. This habitually takes the form of spending large parts of the day in bed asleep, seeking relief in dreams. I know I should get off my chuff and go and do some gardening or go out for a walk but it all seems so pointless really. The outside world is noisy and chaotic and full of hateful people; if I go out I will be exposed to all of it. So I'll stay in my shell for a little. The feeling usually passes after a few days, it's like having a cold. Sometimes it's brought on by work, too much of other people coming at me demanding things, being on my feet all day with not enough rest, and changes in everything. We had a little article the other day in our in-house work magazine about welcoming change. It was so patronizing, it made me spit! Apparently, it's all our own fault for having the wrong attitude, blah blah bloody blah. No. Rejection of change is a survival mechanism, long hardwired into us. Look at animals; does your cat or dog like change? No. Change is threatening and dangerous, it means an organism is now going to have to put in a lot of energy to adapt to a new situation, energy that could have been more usefully employed to maintain a pleasant holding pattern of existence. No where do the powers that be (employers, politicians) admit that constant change is not good for us, especially when we have no control over what form that change may take. I'm fairly convinced that one of the reasons for the spiralling rates of depression in the first-world countries is due to the constant change we are bombarded with daily, as well as the daily diet of bad news and just plain lies coming from the media.
    Went to my local fish n'chippie last night and he was closed! I hope not for good, and I hope nothing has happened to him or his family. I've been going there for 12 years now; he makes great fish and chips and good hamburgers too. There's a Chinese takeaway next door, but I will not have Chinese takeaway, no way; I've known several people made seriously ill from eating food prepared by Chinese. And it's just boiled rice or noodles and veg. with a bit of meat - you could make it yourself at home for a fraction of the price and without the need to play Russian roulette with your gut. Or Chinese roulette, perhaps.
 Well, I've reached the end of my rant. Better feelings tomorrow, maybe.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

This is the time of year that the maroony-pink hydrangea turns an interesting purply-browny-greeny colour. The pears and plums have all been gathered in, and now I'm waiting for the cranberries to ripen so I can dry them and add them to muesli during the winter.

What did you want to be when you grew up? This is one of those dinner-party questions that can be very interesting and revealing. I wanted to be an archaeologist. There was a series in a children's magazine that I used to read, about the great archaeological finds: the ten cities of Troy, Mycenae, the Sutton Hoo hoard and of course, Howard Carter and the burial treasure of Tutankhamun. However, I revised my plans when I realised that it was unlikely I would discover any such thing in New Zealand. I would spend my professional life excavating pre-Maori shell middens and the leavings of Victorian privies. Not romantic at all. I asked two colleagues at work yesterday. One had wanted to be a fireman for a while, but then decided she would rather be an orphan! A common feeling, that we have been born to the wrong family ("These people just can't be related to me"). Another colleague wanted to be a policewoman all through her high school years, until her parents invited a real policewoman for a visit to talk to her. When she realised how horrible being a policewoman would be (telling parents about children's deaths, dealing with drunk and violent people) she realised it was not for her.
  What did you want to be when you grew up? And how/when did you become disillusioned, if disillusioned you were?

12.51

Busy day yesterday. I had to get up early to deliver my car to the garage (the right indicator light was not working) so walked back home, about 2 kms. Got home, vacuumed and dusted the house, and bottled the plums I picked yesterday. These are the best plums I've ever tasted, but I don't know what sort they are. I try to get as many as I can, but parts of the tree are too high now, I'll have to get it topped a bit. Then I walked back to the garage, picked up the car, and had a little afternoon nap. Out again at 5'o'clock for a drinkies-thing for leaving colleagues, then on to dinner with friends. Crazy. Some days I do nothing but read a book, other days all sorts of stuff gets done.

Today is February 22. Three years ago, at 12.51pm, there was a massive earthquake right underneath this city. 185 people lost their lives. The city was a chaos of destruction, the army was called in and search and rescue units from all around the world combed the city for survivors and bodies. There was no water, no electricity, no sewage reticulation. For months the confusion continued; places of work that had not collapsed were closed. People left the city in droves. Aftershocks continued daily, further traumatizing everyone.
    Three years on, much of the central city has been cleared of rubble and dangerous buildings demolished.  Ongoing problems with insurance and the government body created to deal with the rebuild have ensured that in many places little or nothing has been done. People are still living in caravans and broken houses while insurance companies dicker about whether the houses should be rebuilt or demolished. Road works are endemic throughout the city. If you need to travel anywhere, you have to check out a website of road closures and plan your route. I could go on and on but... Yes, some good things came of it. People helped each other. And we got used to outdoor Portacoms or poo-ed unashamedly in the garden, cooked on camping gas cookers, and fetched water from the nearest source. We're Kiwis, we just get on with it.
  There's a memorial service in the Botanic Gardens today. I won't be going. I don't need a memorial service to remember; I'll never forget what it felt like and what it sounded like, and the horror of listening to the radio as the body-count went higher and higher. The newspaper today is full of earthquake stories, but I can only read a few. These things are not supposed to happen in your own city, but they do, they have to happen to some of us, somewhere, sometime. You just have to keep going.

Holiday stays

Eremo Natura il Giglione, up in the hills east of Arezzo



Villa i Cancelli, Florence

One of the Romanesque churches of Pratovecchio. Not staying very near this church but hope to see it.




Been very focussed on my trip (only five and a half weeks now). I've decided to go to an area called the Casentino, a valley to the east of Florence, up against the western side of the Apennines. This is the very top of the valley of the Arno. Its history is one of monastic establishments, drawn there by the peace and seclusion of the thickly forested hills - Chiusi della Verna was the place where St Francis received the stigmata. The sanctuary church has terracotta works by della Robbia which I hope to see. Nearby Camaldoli was established as a large monastery and hermitage by the Benedictine Camaldolese order, and Pratovecchio has several very old churches. I'm staying at the Monastero Monache Domenicane Santa Maria delle Neve, the monastery of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Mary of the Snows. Villa i Cancelli ( the Villa of the Windows) is another convent, in Florence, above the city on the northern hills. There's a very good website called Monastery Stays that I found these through. And Eremo Natura il Giglione is a BandB that I found on airBnB; it might be a bit hard to get to but I'll get there somehow!
   So now I have to get more stuff sorted; money arrangements,
and what to do with Thomas and the house. Poor Thom, he'll be so lonely here while I'm away. Someone will be coming to feed him, but it's not the same as having his doting Mummy with him.
  I'll have to start a list of things to get done, and some bits and pieces to buy before I go. It's exciting but scary as well; I'm already having "I'm late-for-the-plane!" type nightmares!

Bing Crosby - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Busily doing nothing...

It's Saturday and I'm at home, not achieving anything in particular. No, I have not done the vacuuming, or the washing, or the washing-up. I have not done any gardening or mowed the lawn, which really does need doing.
  Instead, I have:
Practiced my Italian grammar
Made many cups of coffee
Stroked the cat
Took said cat into garden to sit in the sun
Been bitten by a mosquito
Read my book on John Donne and found out that his great-great-    grandfather was Sir Thomas More (didn't know this - why?)
Made testy comments on-line to the newspaper's opinion column
Eaten two nectarines and a plum
Watched most of a Chinese martial arts movie "Flying swords at Dragon Gate" (very enjoyable, several women warriors)
And it's only 2.15. What else will I manage not to do today?

Fruit and veg

Today's harvest

First sweetcorn ever - just like bought ones! But fresher.

Today I turned this load of windfalls into...

...these jars of preserves (and two cups of pear nectar for drinking).

Most of the windfalls are badly bruised on one side where they hit the ground so there's 2 pears for one, quantity-wise. The leftovers make great compost. It's good to have some bottled fruit in case we have an electricity cut during the winter; I can live on cold fruit and don't have to worry about the fruit defrosting and spoiling.

Continuing the theme of austerity, I got my bike out today and had a ride around. I haven't ridden for a long time, and am surprisingly wobbly and unco-ordinated, out of practice, and my thighs ached quite early on. Will continue with this and attempt to get a bit fitter.

It's raining, but not men (thank Goddess)

Pouring down as I write, the most rain we have had in a month. Our summer has been poor this year, cold and cloudy but dry, not very good for growing things or ripening fruit - little sun, little rain. At least I left the car out, so I don't have to wash it now.

Pears in the rain

Thom nonplussed by the sudden wet - "Can you let me in, please?"

Potager still looks nice though. I'm going to have a lot of fennel seed for pear and fennel seed chutney. The chair is a bit plebeian, design-wise, but it does good double service as a hose stand, and for sitting out in my jarmees with a coffee early in the morning.

Having to revisit my budget, owing to the new austerity regime of my employer. (No extra work, which helps provide a few luxuries).

Bought a whole fish today, much cheaper than buying it filleted. I'll have to learn how to use the fish head etc. for stock. I'm quite good at cheaper meat cuts (marinate and slow cook) but fish are a bit of an unknown for me. Living in a small house with no range-hood or fan in the kitchen means the smell of cooked fish tends to linger longer than I like. There is a good Chinese trick for lessening fishy smells; use grated fresh root ginger with the fish. It also seems to improve the flavour of the fish. And there's a way with offal too, which involves cooking it in 'red sauce', a mixture of rice wine (or any other wine you have on hand), soy sauce, and fresh ginger (and some other ingredients that I can't remember). It takes away the flavour that I can only describe as tasting like dirt smells. (I used to have the recipe many years ago, it was in a Kenneth Lo cookbook but I suspect that my mother-in-law destroyed the recipe book I loaned her out of her hatred for me). Not a big offal fan; I think I'd sooner turn vegan. But no cheese, Gromit! That I couldn't live without.

Hello

I've been a bit quiet the last week; problems with my password and signing in, all sorted now. Trouble is, nothing much to write about. I've been reading several things, of course. A biography of Florence Nightingale and her family, called "Nightingales" by Gillian Gill, and "A royal passion" by Katie Whitaker, about the 'turbulent marriage' of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Both books very readable, although I stopped about three-quarters way through with the Charles I one. (I know how the story ends).
   Both books brought home to me how lucky I am to live in a secular society, where people are not burnt at the stake for crossing themselves or not crossing themselves in church, where you can choose what you believe in and how you express that belief (or not, if you're an atheist like me). 
  Charles I was too Catholic for some, and not Catholic enough for others. Victorian England was not so extreme as Stuart England, but Florence Nightingale felt the stings of religious prejudice as well. Her championing of the mystical aspects of Catholicism and assertions that Catholic nuns were better nurses than Anglican nuns caused her to be treated with great suspicion by some quarters of English society. 
   I am about to start another biography, of John Donne, my favourite Elizabethan poet, who famously flip-flopped between Catholicism and Anglicanism but managed to keep his head attached to his body and become Dean of St Pauls. He was a complex man who lived in complex times, so I'm looking forward to this. Will get back to you.

Pic pick

It's dahlia season - this magenta one is a seedling that has grown up in the vegetable garden

Not sure what this one is called

The desk in my blue and white room, nice retro lamp too

The vegetable garden

Lychnis coronaria still going strong. I'm going to have sweet corn this year, first time ever

Trying to paint chocolate cosmos. The velvety browny-red is a real challenge, not yet achieved.