Aftershocks

Still getting regular aftershocks here. Don't feel them much in the day, but at night. I have to say that I'm now able to sleep through them, shows how a body can get used to anything, even the cats don't bother waking unless its a real wobbler.
Didn't go away as the weather has not been great, except for the day of the memorial service. Thankfully it was a fine day, or everyone would have been in tears all the time. Still can't get my head around the surreal situation, of people being killed by an earthquake in my home town. It's like seeing Godzilla or the Second Coming, just too weird.
And what about Gorgeous Gaddafi? He has such terrible taste in clothes. What's with the shit-coloured wrap-around? Doesn't he know that all self-respecting dictators get suits from Armani?
Spent yesterday replanning and clearing the piece of garden that will be the new expanded vege garden. It's goin to be more than a vege garden though, more of an edible garden, including herbs and fruit. One sleepless night I realised that the sunniest most sheltered part of the garden is only growing agapanthus - it could be growing tomatoes. My tomatoes have been poor this year, probaly because there is too much shade where they are. I also need to get plants started earlier in the season as our growing season seems to have shortened in recent years, with rainy damp autumns rather than sunny dry ones.
Now at the library, it's the almost the only one open, so its busy, busy. I'm going home to spend my afternoon with Rufus (Whoar) Sewell in Middlemarch. Nothing like a costume drama in times of stress.

What next?

I've decided to take a quick trip out of the city. It's too stressful here at the moment, we haven't had an aftershock for a while so I guess it's building up for another big one. After what has happened in Japan we are worried about a tsunami of our own now. If one comes it will be all over with for Christchurch. One bloody doonmsayer here has predicted another big one for around the 20th of this month, so I'm off to the shops to lay in stores and a gas cooker. I'm at the library now, its full of crying kids and I CAN'T STAND IT! So I'll sign off now. God bless.

What can I say?

Yes, another earthquake. A worse one. A fatal one. This is the strangest thing I've ever been through, and I wish I could wake up and find that it's all a nightmare, but no. Today I'm back at work, some "normality" but not really. My house is fine, I am fine, the cats and my mother are fine, but my city is in ruins, and people are dead. What will become of us? Is it still safe to live here, or should we all be leaving? What does the future hold? No one can say. Someone has predicted another big earthquake on 20th March, but we don't need one. We've had enough.

Venice, Italy

Been thinking and googling heaps this week, planning and booking my trip to the Veneto. Managed to get a prenotazione to stay in a convent in Ponte della Guerra, right behing San Marco, in an old palazzo now turned into a school/ convent by the Suore Figlie de San Guiseppe Caburlotto. (If you want to see where I'm staying Google images "Istituto San Guiseppe Venice"). It's good to know I have a neighbourhood to go to when I get there.
Now I have to book the rest of my trip, although the middle section, a walk around the Euganean Hills is already booked and paid for. I'm not sure whether to stay in Padua for two days or go to a little place called Asolo, to see the Villa Barberigo, one of Palladio's masterpieces. It's a bit hard to get to by public transport, so... maybe maybe not.
Needless to say, I'm very excited. I want to go now!
Saw awful movie the other night. One of those insomniac sessions came over me, so I watched "Interview with a vampire", Brad Pitt and little Tom Cruise looking so daft in long hair and long teeth. Kirsten Dunst was great, but I think the movie should have been far more overtly homoerotic. Apparently though, Brad and Tommy despise each other so I guess that was out. Antonio Banderas was really hard to understand, not sure if it was his accent or his difficulty in speaking through false, sharp teeth. Glad I never paid good money to see this tomato.
Also watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona" again which I love. The menage'd trois are all so gorgeous, and I have a crush on all of them. Would I fly to Oviedo with Javier Bardem, oh yes.

My gardens

My gardens and all 197
Originally uploaded by Lynners59

'Sally Holmes' in early morning light

My gardens

My gardens
Originally uploaded by Lynners59

Roses from my garden. 'The Friar' 'Iceberg' 'Perle d'Or' and 'Gruss an Aachen' . The rose outside the window is 'Remember Me' and the items on the table are all second-hand goodies from church fairs.

Another part of the wood

Went to get my car's warrant of fitness on Monday. I'm going to a new place called Straight Torque (!) in a part of the city that I usually drive through. I had 30 minutes to wait, so went for a walk around the area, an industrial/light industrial part of Christchurch. It's were all the real things get done, full of automotive repairs, plumbers, gasfitters, chandlers, printers, sign writers, glass fitters, and demolition sales yards, with a huge depot for empty containers (the big ones that sail on ships) stacked thirty feet high in the old railway yards. I really enjoyed my walk, very different to the leafy suburb where I usually exercise. Things are ugly and utilitarian, but in a good useful way. Not a place to go at night though. I felt like I'd been in another city, a leaner, meaner one that didn't exist in the tourist promos but interesting all the same.
Just finished reading a life of Katherine Parr. ("Katherine the queen" by Someone-or-other). The question I'm always left with in these biographies of the long-dead is how we can claim to really know what their lives were like, or empathise with them. It was another world, full of extremist religious beliefs and great cruelty, where people's motivations seem quite inexplicable. Fear of eternal hellfire and damnation didn't seem to be a detterent for doing bad things, though. I suppose if you repented on your deathbed and gave your worldly goods to the Church you got out of punishment. This was only really an option for the aristocracy; ordinary people with no money or property just had to burn.
Henry VIII really was a shit. No tolerance for differences of opinion there.