Random Jottings

Trivia

Did you know that an elver was a young eel?  Of course you did.  Did you know that a leptocephalus is also an eel?  No?  Well I have had this fact tucked away in the back of my mind since I was about 11 years old when we had a biology lessons on eels. Not the most riveting subject in the world but somehow that word leptocepahus stuck in my mind and has been there ever since. I thought this knowledge would never be used, but then one wonderful evening when the children were younger and we were watching University Challenge, a question came up about eels.  I leapt to my feed screaming LEPTOCEPHALUS at the screen and jumping up and down like a madwoman while my family looked at me as if I had lost my senses, but did any of those dozy students know?  They did not (as most of them were reading history or Middle English or Elvish or something it was hardly surrising) and when Paxman gave the answer with his usual sneer on his face and it was indeed, leptocephalus, well, my cup runneth over....

Why do useless bits of information stick in one's mind?  I was pondering on this the other night as I laid in bed waiting for sleep to come and my mind was drifting in that lethargic stage before finally nodding off.

I know the identity of every murderer in every Agatha Christie story.  Now this has not helped me one little bit in my journey through life, but this information has stuck with me through thick and thin which makes re-reading Dame Agatha a bit of a waste of time, though sometimes it is good to know the murderer and see the clues she has put in front of the reader and which I missed the first time round (sometimes miss the second as well).

I know all the names of Queen Victoria's children, again not something to drop into pre-dinner chat, but it did stand me in good stead once.  I was visiting Osborne House on the Isle of Wight which I had wanted to do for ages as Queen Victoria is one of my favourite historical figures, when I spotted a pretty hideous cabinet in one of the rooms which had miniatures of all her offspring on the front.  I decided to show off to my sister who was with me and went through naming the lot.  Though I did not know it one of the volunteer guides was listening and was most impressed by this and came over to talk to us.  I remember she was called Ruth and she was a huge Queen Vic fan and said that most tourists who visited the house were only interested in getting through as quickly as possible and then going to the gift shop.  Once we got talking and she realised I was a real enthusiast she  took us both on a private tour and let us stay behind after the official closing time.  I was taken into the study where Victoria and Albert sat and worked at their respective desks, and she lifted the red rope and let me sit at the desk of Her Maj and use her pen and write a note, and took us into cupboards and drawers and bathrooms etc which the public did not usually see.  It was terrific and when we went to visit the Swiss Cottage about a mile away in the grounds, which was where the children used to play, she phoned ahead and said we were to have VIP treatment, so we did.  This was one occasion when my useless information stood us in good stead.

Here are a few more snippets of trivia for you:

In one of the bathrooms we visited behind closed doors there was a huge nude on the wall just above the bath.   

Albert invented a long stick with a claw on the end which could turn the handle on the door and lock it.  This was used when he and Vicky were in bed and having fun and he did not want anyone to come in.  It was just long enough to reach from the bed to the door. So perhaps Prince Albert was not as pious as he looked.

Well, as I said there were nine children...

And in case you really, really want to know they were Edward, Victoria, Alfred, Arthur, Leopold, Louise, Alice, Helena and Beatrice.  There, now you can go to bed happy.  Beats counting sheep.

Housework and dangers thereof Part Deux

I TOLD you housework is a waste of time. I told you that every time I do housework something happens, ALWAYS.  Not just a bruise because of my meeting with the sink.  Oh no, it had to be something really good.  So here goes.

I  had done the housework, I had done the supermarket shop, I made a cup of tea and lay on the sofa in a supine position with DVD on, remote in hand, relax, bliss sigh great.  After about half an hour I was aware I could hear a dripping sound, drip drip drip.  This was then followed by a sizzling sound.  I get up turned round and water was pouring down my living room wall, soapy water as well, and it was dripping behind my light switch.  OK rubber gloves on, switch light off.  More dripping, go into the kitchen and it is pouring down the wall all over the KITCHEN FLOOR.  Yes that is right, the one I washed earlier on today.  I belted upstairs and thundered on my neighbour's door.  Now Ian is a nice young lad and has been my neighbour for some years but he is a tad prone to accidents and this is the third time he has caused a flood.  He opened the door, hiding behind it as it was clear he was stark naked, and looking sheepish.  Yes, he and his lady had decided to have a bath together (as you do) had run the bath and had forgotten about it (I did not ask why, decided best not to know) and it had overflowed.

I told him to put some clothes on and to come downstairs and mop up my kitchen floor immediately.  Second wash of the day - boy is it clean.  He did, he apologized, he was very embarrassed so I forgave him. Again.

So, I then made myself another cup of tea and went back to the sofa and lay there thinking What will happen next?  So far, fingers crossed, nothing.

So all together now: IT IS ALL TOO MUCH TO BEAR...................

Housework and Dangers thereof...

Back in October 2006 I blogged about a day when I was overcome with this awful feeling that I should do housework. Now it has come upon me again and I suppose I should not complain as it only seems to happen every three or four months which I can cope with.

I have had a very difficult week at work and had already planned to be quiet this weekend and to catch up on some chores.  That these chores consisted of blogging, reading, eating and watching a DVD or two should be made clear - cleaning the bathroom et al was not on my list.  However, as I entered the aforesaid chamber this morning I took a look at it and decided I simply had to give it a clean.  So, I scrubbed the sink, I scrubbed the bath, I took the Vim to the shower screen to get rid of all the hard water marks on it, I cleaned the tiles, washed the windows, scrubbed out the toilet (a job I loathe only next to cleaning the oven) but it has to be done for hygienic reasons even if for no other and, finally, washed the floor.

Now, whenever I do housework something always happens that makes me think Why oh Why did you start?  You KNOW it always ends in disaster.  Bear with me gentle reader, as I tell you what happened next.

I had taken the loo brush holder (yes I am sorry to mention it as we all know how horrid they are) into the kitchen, popped it in the sink, filled it with a mixture of water and strong bleach and, with the idea that I would leave it to soak, lifted it out of the sink and, it fell apart in my hands.  I had forgotten it was not fixed to its base.  So, I now have a pool of water and bleach all over the kitchen floor.  I took this as a sign.  I produced lots of old towels, got down on my hands and knees, mopped it all up and cleaned the entire floor in the process.  Goodness me, it looked lovely.  Refilled the brush holder (very carefully this time and left it in the sink).  Did I mention that I was scrubbing the floor only dressed in my nightie and that it was a short one?  No?  Well I was.  I live in a ground floor flat and was on my hands and knees doing all this scrubbing, bent over, bottom in air, in full view of flats across the road when I suddenly realized I had NO underwear on.....

I then had a shower and decided I would write about this awful experience just to cheer you up on a Saturday morning and wrapped up in my dressing gown, old socks on my feet I entered the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea (you remember I had just washed the floor don't you?), shot across the tiles with a grace that would have done Darcy Bussell proud and fetched up against the kitchen sink.  I shall have a bruise tomorrow, I know I will.

I am now safely sitting down, writing this and drinking a cup of tea.  The hoover was due to have its annual outing today but I have decided that it an wait another day/week/month/year as I also have to face the supermarket this afternoon.

As I have said before and will, no doubt, say again It is All Too Much to Bear....

Snow snow snow

OK so I get up this morning and peer out the window and find, shock horror, thick heavy snowflakes falling.  Don't get me wrong, if I was a lady of leisure and could stay indoors and watch the beauty of the snow and the way it makes the countryside look magical, I would love it.  BUT, sadly I had to leave my bijou flatette at 7am, walk to my car, first one out leaving footprints behind me, and brush the snow off the windscreen et al.  Then back the car out very slowly and along to the main road which appeared to have one minuscule piece of grit on it.  (The last time we had a snow fall in Colchester and there were ructions as to the absence of the gritting lorries we were told that they could not get out as they were 'snowed in'.  I kid you not).  Drove in a very stately manner and got to the station.

I was prepared for my trek.  I had a flask of hot coffee, a banana, three books just in case  of being stranded for half a day, I was wearing old trousers, comfy shoes and thick socks.  My ipod was duly charged and I was ready for anything.  So what happens?  Nothing that is what.  The train sailed through the most beautiful countryside all monochrome and white with trees etched against the wintry sky, it was all quite poetical and we arrived at Liverpool Street ON TIME.  This never happens.  It did today.  So laden down with all my unnecessary gear I staggered to the office.  Talk about the law of sod.  Never mind thought I, it will be bad tonight and I can nod sagely and say I told you so.  Nothing.  Caught the train, got a seat, left on time and I arrived home with no hassle at all. So much for the prophets of doom.  What is this country coming to when the trains run on time when it snows?  This is not the service we have come to expect from our railway system.

I was somewhat cheered mid-morning to hear that a partner had sent his secretary an email from his Blackberry saying he had been on his way to work, but his train had started to go backwards so he rather thought he might not make it..........

Now that's more like it!

Uphill all the Way

Transita No 2 this week is Uphill all the Way by Sue Moorcroft  I will admit to a bias in its favour before I even turned to the first page as I knew that part of it was set in Malta.  Sue Moorcroft grew up in Malta and says that if she can't be there, then the next best thing is to put her characters there.  I spent part of my childhood on this wonderful island, only returning for the first time last summer.  Though I found parts of Malta a tad dilapidated now, the beaches and the sea were still stunningly beautiful and brought back many happy memories.

The book starts with a shocking tragedy which leads to the death of Judith's lover, Georgio.  She feels responsible for this accident and is also blamed by Georgio's family who had never approved of her and their relationship as Georgio was married, though long separated from his wife.  In Malta, a Catholic country, divorce was not allowed.  Forced by circumstances to return home to England, Judith finds herself in the spare bedroom at her sister's house, with no home, no job and no future.

Her house has been let in her absence to Adam, who she used to have a crush on when she was at school.  He is not very co-operative about letting her have her home back but it is clear from the start that there is a mutual attraction which eventually comes to fruition over a period of time when Judith works for him as a photographic assistant.  In the meantime time Judith has had to deal with her irascible ex-husband who is jealous of his son Kieran's relationship with her and the fact that he turns to her when he and his girlfriend, Bethan, lose their baby,  her sister who leaves her husband and takes refuge with Judith when she eventually moves back into her home, and the news that Georgio, who had been in a coma when she left Malta, has died.  As the title of the books says it is Uphill all the Way. 

Judith returns to Malta, this time with Adam, to return a family heirloom of Georgio's and also to face her demons and to realise that she was not to blame for the accident, and must learn to forgive herself and continue with her life.  There was one passage in this part of the book that caught my eye immediately:

"Judith steered him onwards and upwards to one of her favourite spots, the heights of the Upper Baracca Gardens (these are in Valletta).  There they stared out over the glinting blue splendour of Grand Harbour........Adam gazed silently over the depths of incredible blue to the church domes and bell towers..."

I stood in this exact spot last summer so knew exactly what Adam and Judith were seeing and here is my photo taken that day:

I enjoyed this book very much, it brought back happy memories of my childhood in Malta and my visit last year.  I also liked Judith.  She had to start all over again at the age of 51, the same age I had to do the same and, like her, I found it Uphill all the Way.

We both got there in the end.  Hooray!

A Moral Dilemma

I appear to be in a Transita-ional period at the moment with three of the Transita list read and tucked under my belt this week.  I will write about all three over the next few days, work, commute and total knackerhood permitting. First up is  An Old Fashioned Arrangement by Susie Vereker.  The book starts with Kim, her heroine, being informed that her husband, Richard  (a slightly dodgy salesman) has gone down in a plane crash in the Indonesian jungle.  The house she is living in is rented and paid for by her husband's firm who are not too happy with the way Richard has carried out his business transactions, and they inform her that they will cease paying the rent by the end of the month.  Further investigations reveals that her worthless other half has taken the money out of their joint savings account, there is no life insurance etc etc.  In other words, Kim is penniless save for her small earnings from teaching English in Geneva, where they are situated. 

An unlikely saviour appears in the somewhat rounded shape of her landlord, Henri who is a lover of women, wealthy, has always had mistresses and has had his eye on Kim for some time.  He makes her an offer.  He will let her live in the house rent free, he will pay for her son's school fees and make her an allowance in return for which she will visit him every Thursday for dinner and love. Kim really has very little choice as her situation is desperate and so she accepts. It is inevitable that as the story progresses she meets a man to whom she is enormously attracted, Mark, and the feeling is mutual.  Further complications set in when it appears that Richard might be alive after all.

How the tangle is resolved and brought to a conclusion makes for an interesting and thoughtful read.  Susie Vereker's style is elegant and graceful and flows along nicely, but I feel that the fact that there is a real moral dilemma here, could be overlooked, precisely because it is such an enjoyable story.

Back in the late 80s there was a film called Indecent Proposal starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harelson.  Redford played the part of a millionaire who offered the married couple of Woody and Demi a million dollars if the wife would spend a night with him.  At first, they laughed and were outraged but then they started to think.  They were poor, not much money in the bank, they could do with the million dollars.  What to do?  Now, as a life long adorer of the aforementioned Robert Redford I very flippantly opined that I would be happy to sleep with RR for $1,000.  One reviewer remarked rather waspishly that she wondered if the decision would have been any easier if the millionaire had been played by Woody Harelson (not the most charismatic man on the planet) and not Robert Redford, as that would have made the dilemma more realistic.

And here we come to the crux of it, in my opinion anyway.  In An Old-Fashioned Arrangement, Henri is a sweetie.  He may be somewhat rounded and not in the first flush of youth, but he is charming, sophisticated, a connoisseur of women and knows how to treat them, even if it is somewhat cavalierly.  Kim finds his love making enjoyable and becomes very fond of him.  BUT, what if her landlord had been a deeply unpleasant, unattractive and lecherous person and what would she have done if he had made the same offer?  Would she have accepted so easily?  and would her friend, who approved of the arrangement and said it gave her a nice 'glow' have been quite so understanding?

What would we do if we found ourselves in this position? Read the book and let me know.  I am certainly not judging Kim here, any mother knows they would do what is necessary to look after their child and, after all, this review is from the woman who said she would spend the night with Robert Redford for $1,000 not a million. 

Who am I kidding - old and baggy as he is now I  would probably still do it for $1.....

Hello everyone

Well for some reason I have received an email from those nice Typepad people telling me that I have been selected for featuring on their home page from today 5 February.  They have told me that this will probably result in an increase of traffic so I am just going to say to anybody who is checking me out for the first time WELCOME and if you like what you see, please call again.

Here is the link: www.sixapart.com/typepad. 

PS - According to these lovely people I am a 'Renaissance Woman'.  Well, I have been called many things in my lifetime but never that....

Harbinger of Spring

Well, if CornflowerBlueStalkingDoveGreyreader are going to burst forth with pictures of spring flowers and snowflakes and trees and all things beautiful, I thought I would have a bash as well. Saw these over the weekend and decided they just had to be bought and put on my bookcase for me to look at while blogging:

Return to the Follies

I have written about  Follies on my blog before and why I love it so much and yesterday I had the privilege of seeing another performance of this simply stunning musical. It was a one off performance for the charity Starlight, which specialises in granting wishes, no matter what they are, to terminally ill children.  I gather that this show had been rehearsed for months, all the stars had given their services free and the London Palladium (which hosts Sound of Music during the week) was jam packed sold out. 

Follies is a show that has a devoted and fanatical following and the audience was obviously full of aficionados on Sunday night.  My friend Rosemary had heard me raving about it for yonks and so I decided that it was time she saw it and made up her own mind, so I purchased two tickets and off we went. I was delighted, but not surprised, to find that she fell in love with it immediately.

I will not repeat my earlier blog posting which I hope you will read, but just to say it was a simply wonderful performance.  Though limited in production and with some bits cut for reasons of space on the stage, its sheer impact was as powerful as ever and the stream of show stopping numbers came on coming, some of which reduced me, and many other members of the audience, to tears.  One in particular called 'Losing my Mind', opens with a beautiful quiet chord and the line' the sun comes up, I think about you'.  It is a song of lost love and quite quite beautiful.  I think Sondheim is a genius, no argument as far as I am concerned.

Standing ovation at the end and applause that went on and on and a quite breathtakingly gorgeous evening.  We stayed up in London for the night so no rushing for the last train, and then coffee with my daughter this morning to discuss THE WEDDING and, THE WEDDING DRESS,  then a visit to the Opera House shop so that I could choose my birthday present from Rosemary.  The bliss of wandering and looking at the shelves of books CD's and DVD's on opera and ballet and knowing I could choose what I wanted.  Well, 'nuff said.

A lovely lovely weekend.  I am still in recovery mode.

Old Bags

You see this picture on the left?  This is the Little Brown Bag, once as rare as hen's teeth, but now carried by practically everyone on my commute and by those commuters who I pass scurrying to their offices.  Now, what I want to know is - how can anybody manage with such a SMALL bag?  I have noticed that owners of these bags are of a certain age (ie - young), dotting along the City pavements in neat little coats with waists belted in tightly, high heeled boots, long straight (very straight) hair with mobile phone clamped to their ear.  I tend to lurk behind them and see if I can get a gander at what is contained in these Little Brown Bags and as far as I can make out, it is a bottle of water, a make up bag, the odd sandwich or piece of food and a bijou umbrella.

Now this picture on the right is of my Brown Bag and you will see that is a Medium Brown Bag of which I am very proud and without which I could not manage.  I would also say that those fellow carriers of the Medium variety also fall into another age category (ie - middle aged  mature).  I wonder if an article on the Generational Aspect of the Brown Bag Phenomenon would be of any interest to anyone? Probably not.

I first bought a MBB in Bloomingdales about four years ago and it has never left my side since.  My last one finally fell apart just a few months ago and a dear friend who visits regularly from New York and, who by some wonderful good fortune, lives close to Bloomingdales, brought another one over in her luggage.  She promises to keep me supplied for the foreseeable so thank goodness for that.

This bag will take a laptop (I know I have done it) and all the accoutrements mentioned being found in the LBB, but it will also take magazines, files, note pads, an organiser, a lunch box and, of course, books.  This is the main reason I have this MBB.  As a commuter I am never without a book.  OK most of the time I fall asleep, no doubt with my mouth open and nowadays I have my wonderful iPod plugged in, but I never move without one, or two, or three.  With my train line, you can never be sure that you are not going to be stranded in a field full of cows with no knowledge of when you are going to get home, if ever.  So a book is essential.  Then of course, if the wait is a long one and I finish my current book I am stuck, so a back up book goes into the bag as well.  However, if I have nearly finished my first one and the likelihood is that I will have to start my second one, then of course I need a back up to the back up.  I write about my insanity on this blog safe in the knowledge that everyone who reads it will understand completely and utterly.

Oh and I forgot, there is also the problem of bringing home the books from Amazon or Abe Books or Alibris that are sent to my office............

Carrier bags are a totally different thing altogether and are, on the whole, not things of beauty. There are exceptions, however.  I was given this bag about seven years ago to carry away my purchases in Barnes & Noble in Boston.  I think it is a terrific bag but it is now beginning to fray at the edges, if plastic bags can be said to fray, and can no longer be trusted to hold up much longer.  I have decided I am going to take the scissors to it, flatten it out and put it in a frame for my wall as I think it is just too good to bin.  What do you think?