The Muppets: Pöpcørn

Love the way the Muppets have embraced the comedic aspects of new technology.

The Muppets: Ode To Joy - still one of my favs

Busy day

Bought another chip for my camera, room for 1400 images! These are just some experimental shots to see if it's working OK. Seems to be. Thomas is out of focus but that's me not the camera.

Even had time to plant a few bulbs. Not going crazy over bulbs this year, I've spent enough on the trip and things associated with it. There's always something you need, new socks or a new bra, batteries for the torch, plus a whole lot of catfood for Thomas. I wish I could take him, I'll miss having a cat around. I'll try and find an Italian cat, the Italians are keen on cats, and there are several public refuges for strays where the cats live within a fenced area and are fed every day by volunteers. There's one in Rome in an old temple in Via Arenula; the cats sit on the warm stones and have a lovely life. The temple complex is below the road level so the cats are enclosed (well, as much as you can enclose a cat).

http://www.romancats.com/index_eng.php

 I once tried to feed a cat in San Gimignano; I offered him some processed cheese from my sandwich. You would have thought I'd offered him fresh excrement judging by the look on his face! Wow, even the cats are gourmets in Italy.

Less mad

Feeling a little less panicky now. Last day of work was yesterday, and today got down to some serious sorting out of packing and getting things ready for the housesitter. Thom's food is stored away, he's been flea'd, and I've started eating up the bits and pieces in the fridge. Made a pork and apple casserole with red cabbage and squash, I'll be eating that for the next three nights. I'm not going to do a big tidy in the garden, that can wait for when I get home and will be part of the Big Winter Clean-Up. Most garden produce is gathered in, just the Red Delicious apples to go, and I'll have a couple before I leave. Still have to write accomodation details in my diary, but I'll take a sheaf of photocopied maps, etc. anyway. Whew! It's starting to seem real now, in a good way.

Mad

Being driven mad by anxiety about the trip, lying awake at night. What have I not done? I'm reminded of that bit in the Anglican service of General Confession of Sins - "we have done that which we ought not to have done, and have left undone that which we ought". Next time, I'll just grab passport, ticket and money and fly away. I hate this time just before departure, it's nervewracking. It's playing hell with my stomach too, which always happens when I get nervy. And I want to snap at everyone. Ridiculous woman, I should be happy, but...all I can think of is why the hell am I doing this? I'll know when I get there of course but now, at this end of the journey?  I don't know if I'll be able to blog from Italy, hopefully I will, but now I'm thinking should I buy an i-Pad? Lots of places have wi-fi which is OK if you have a device with you. I really can't afford one, so you may all have to wait until I get back before I can put up pictures, etc.
  Rats. Speaking of which, my in-house vermin destruction machine, Thomas, has caught four rats and three mice over the last two weeks. Such a clever boy! He likes to leave them on the kitchen doorstep so I'll see them straight away in the morning, and give him a big thank-you fuss session. Thanks, Thomas.

Bits and pieces

This is where I'm staying in Florence, just a little room with a pull-out bed (on the right of the picture) a tiny kitchen and bathroom. Windows with shutters! It's in Via Fiesolana, not far from the Cathedral, an easy walk from most places. Looking at the Italian newspapers, they're having transport strikes today - no! no! Hope these won't go on.

Thomas has cunningly converted the clothes-horse into a comfortable hammock. Wish I could take him with me, I'll miss him heaps.

Thomas under the rhubarb leaf

Thomas sleeping under a rhubarb leaf. This is where he sleeps at night, when he's not rat-catching. The leaf acts like an umbrella and keeps the damp off.

Frustrating occurence yesterday at work. A customer came in to do something on our public computers. Unfortunately for both of us, he spoke no English at all, and I don't speak Malay. Not only did he not speak English, he couldn't read it at all either. I'm still not sure what he wanted me to do; I now think he wanted to sign in to his email, but had got on to the sign-up page by mistake. Nothing he did made any connection with the Yahoo account he was trying to sign in/up for. The most frustrating thing was that he plainly thought that he was speaking English; if I asked him a question, he would just make a tsptsp noise with his mouth. Now this may sound like English to a non-English speaker but it isn't English.  And completely impossible to explain the requirement for upper case and numerals in a password. I once served a Japanese man who knew English words but not how to pronounce them, rather like the chap in 'Allo, allo" who said "Good moaning" instead of Good morning, with the accents on the wrong syllables and incorrect pronounciation of individual letters. It was a bizarre experience. The only thing one can do is say (after all avenues have been tried) "I do not understand you, I can not help you." Frustrating for both of us.
   I face my own brush with not being understood when I travel. I take a phrase book because my Italian is not nearly good enough for explaining complex concepts, and of course, when you are under stress, the first thing that goes is your second language skill. So Goddess of languages, be gentle with me!

Eccentric delphinium

This is a nutty delphinium; it flowers when others don't. Last year it flowered in early spring, this year in autumn.

Here's a picture of my cavolo nero and Roma tomatoes. The dark green and bright red make a nice contrast.

Only 10 days now till flyday. I've got to haul down my suitcase and do a practice pack to see what I need to get before I go. Get Thomas' food, inform the vet and clean the house up for the person who will be housesitting/cat-caring. Get my hair done. Check my itinerary yet again. And again. Make up a little parcel of things and "where to contact" to leave with a friend. Buy a new daypack because my old one is so filthy it probably won't be allowed on the plane. Enter contacts in my diary, with a daily to-do list for planning on-going transport. Buy a new chip for my camera. Take pictures of my garden to share with any keen Italian gardeners I might meet. Return my library books. Etc, etc. Check the bus timetable for getting to the airport.

Hopefully, I'll be so knackered by the time I fly off that I'll sleep for a few hours, after the adrenaline has worn off.

This is typical!

Got my money for Italy yesterday. Fool! I should have waited one day; the Reserve bank have raised the cash rate and today the NZdollar is worth more! If I'd have waited one day I would have saved $225.00. This is typical! as Basil Fawlty used to say. Everytime I buy some consumer good (which isn't often) odds on that the next day or next week I will find the exact same thing being sold for half- or two-thirds the price somewhere else. Why didn't I read the financial news yesterday instead of today? What a dumb bum I am. There's no disgust like self-disgust, no condemnation like self-condemnation. My mother used to complain that I could not take criticism. Yes, Mother dear, that's because I'm constantly criticising myself and don't need others to add to the pain. RRRrrr!

In which I have a cold

Oh goody, I have a cold. I've had lots of soup, tea and lemon drinks, so now my stomach feels awash. The soup was nice, tomato from my garden tomatoes. Feel feeble too. I've got a list of chores, none of which have been done - pick cranberries, dig potatoes, turn compost etc. etc. but I just can't be bothered.
    I've been watching 'Maurice', the Merchant-Ivory movie of E.M Forster's novel. Lovely, lovely Rupert Graves, I've fallen in love all over again with him, rare that you get such a great actor in such a tasty body - he's the whole package.  Hugh Grant and James Wilby not so much. It's hard to believe in Hugh Grant (Huge Grunt as a friend calls him) as a homosexual when you remember his antics with the Divine Miss Brown. James Wilby is not my type at all, I've never liked blondes with wavy or curly hair, funny how we all have a 'type'. Mum didn't like dark men; her beau-ideal was Leslie Howard as Ashley in "Gone with the wind". Daft, who would have Leslie Howard if they could have Clark Gable? The question is of course, purely academic. 
  Not much going on otherwise. The floods have drained away, but the weather men say that we will have another wet weekend coming up.  It's only 19 days now before I fly off to spring in Italy.
Woohoo!

P.S. Just finished a Georgette Heyer ("Cousin Kate"). People in those days suffered from things called 'putrid sore throats' (why putrid I don't know) and applied things called cataplasms to their feet. I had to look up cataplasm - it's a poultice, and applied to the feet was supposed to drain infection from the upper body, away from the more crucial areas like the heart and lungs. I have no intention of applying cataplasms to my own feet in my putrid sore throat state.

Harvest day

Taking stock of the garden today, after the storm. Nothing damaged, and Phyllis Bide is flowering well in her second flush.

And I had a go at the vegetable garden, harvesting what I could find, which proved to be more than expected;

Marina di Chioggia pumpkins, scallopini (somewhat overgrown) purple potatoes, a red cabbage, sweetcorn, beetroot, zucchini (both round and long), rhubarb and tomatoes Russian Red and Roma. Plus lemon verbena for pot pourri, tarragon for tarragon vinegar, parsley, oregano and fennel seeds.

Still a lot of tomatoes and the late potatoes to harvest, and cranberries to pick and dry for muesli and cakes. It still amazes me how much variety you can get from a little patch of soil. Magic!

Christchurch - Flooding and storm damage

I've just walked around the neighbourhood to look at the results of last night's storm. 'They' say it's the worst storm since 1975 - how they measure these things I don't know - wind speed? amount of precipitation? It certainly seemed to me to be as bad as the 1968 storm, known in NZ as the Wahine storm, because it wrecked the inter-island ferry in Wellington harbour. Driving home last night, the wind was constant, just one big turbulence. Today everything is covered with shredded leaves and vegetation. Took these pictures of the Heathcote River near my house. Fortunately for me, my part of the area is quite high so doesn't flood. I have a theory that when the city was mostly swamp, this was an island in the swamp. The earthquakes have made parts of the city much lower and changed drainage patterns, hence more danger of flooding now
. 

Tree limbs in Risingholme Park

Opawa bridge

              Where the car is, is roadway, right to the fence.

River end of the next street.

One of the empty sites created by the demolition of a damaged house has been sown with a wildflower mix.

The sun is starting to come out now; hopefully we won't have more of this for some time.

Storm

Terrible storm raging at the moment, winds, rain, cold. It's very noisy, so I think I won't be going to bed anytime soon. It's warmer in the living room anyway. I've got "A passage to India" to read; I've never read it although I've seen the film. Got the candles out in case the power goes off, part of town is already without power. Hopeful that it will be better in the morning, but it's going to be a bumpy night.

Russian reds and rudbeckia

First day of autumn yesterday, and the weather has turned a bit cooler, but it's quite pleasant. Spent yesterday evening and this out in the garden, deadheading things and picking vegetables. These Russian Red tomatoes have done well this year.

And it's rudbeckia time again. I like them, there's something about them; they last well as a cut flower and really brighten up the garden. Some people find them too gaudy, but I think they are cheerful.

Defrosting the fridge while I write this, waiting for the curtain of ice to splosh into the pan of hot water I've got in there. Not very good at doing these things in a regular sort of way. I should work out some sort of household chore schedule, except that I know I'd never keep to it.

Been watching The League of Gentlemen on DVD, the English comedy, not the steampunk movie. Boy, it's just weird, but very funny. I wonder where the English got that strange sense of humour they have, a mix of blackness and way-out absurdity? Mark Gatiss who plays Sherlock Holme's brother Mycroft and co-wrote the 'Sherlock' series is in it, and now and again I can see a little bit of the 'Sherlock' style. 

Given up on the books of Game of Thrones though. Sometimes the TV series is better than the book, and that's the case in GoT. Imho. The costumes and the sets are so attractive, you don't see them in the novel. Whether I would have liked the books if I'd read them before watching the series I don't know, but it's also the pleasure of watching the actors as well. Later on in the series Diana Rigg puts in several appearances as Lady Tyrrel; she is great. And  Peter Dinklage as Tyrion is a great draw for me. When he's off screen I'm always looking forward to seeing him again.