Category: bees

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Robert the Giant Easter Bunny and the screen breaks

fishnets

I’ve been away from the keyboard and cavorting in the meatspace, basking in the joy of friends. And of course the boys are on holiday and require entertainment of one sort or another. I am delightfully happy.

One problem with actually doing stuff is that there’s so much to savour and so little time to write about it, but the continuing discipline of a picture a day gives a framework for memory.

The picture above, for instance, is the table of the abode in which I found myself on the morning of the visit of Robert the Giant Easter Bunny who brought mini eggs and some rather sophisticated dark chocolate balls. Robert, it seems, is the name of one of the oversized lagomorphs to which I have already had cause to refer. I’m told his breeder is disenchanted with the proposed North Korean farming programme having discovered that only the apparatchiks were getting to eat them.

I have learnt to hula-hoop; been down the biggest slide in the Tate Modern; bought wool to knit for the newly-arrived miracle baby of a dear friend (in the new-look John Lewis); been to the theatre not once but twice, one trip with my father which may be the start of a regular treat; cooked and been cooked for and drunk many a fine vintage; floated home through a world of infinite complexity and walked under the soft spring sunshine in many places with many friends.

Tomorrow the boys, Maizy and I set out in the van to this campsite until the end of the week. We’re hoping the weather will be good but, in a clear demonstration of the maxim that more information is not necessarily better information we are bewildered by the range of meteorological prognostications available for the same town over the same period:

bbc.jpg

yahoo.jpg

accuweather.jpg

met-office.jpg

Further digesting shall take place of the extraordinary week on Holy Island, about which Alistair has already written and pictured. I’m not sure I’ve got the words.

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Winter holiday

The trick, I find, with hot lemon, honey and whiskey, is to add the whiskey last after the mixture has cooled a little in order not to drive off too much of the alcohol. It being lunchtime I have, after long and deep reflection, decided to defer the whiskey until the bedtime brew. I can tell that it’s a vital ingredient by the way the whiskeyless blend slips down with only minimal stinging. The alcohol is essential for efficient scrubbing of bacteria from the throat.

The sweet-sour medicine is in my new mug, a present from Small-Loch A, which is decorated with a reproduction of the original cover of Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome. It’s profoundly comforting. As a child, and well into my teens, I was regularly woken by nightmares of great terror which would recur as soon as I went back to sleep. The antidote, a result of some historical accident no doubt, was Winter Holiday which took up permanent residence beside my bed. I read and re-read and read again, probably hundreds of times over the years, as much as was required to result in eventually falling into a dreamless sleep.

Maizy too has been unwell. On Tuesday morning she suddenly started shivering violently and slunk under the kitchen table with her tail as far between her legs as such a docked appendage can reach. Nothing would coax her out. When I crawled under the table towards her she slunk out, her paws leaving little wet prints on the wooden floor. She screamed when I tried to pick her up.

The vet explained that the wet paw-prints were the result of sweating caused by stress. She also said, after a thorough examination, that she thought Maizy had pulled or sprained a muscle around her right back leg. I have little doubt this occurred during one of Maizy’s regular attempts to scale the 5-foot high wall into the neighbour’s garden in pursuit of next-door’s cat. The vet’s kind words and a pain-killing injection left Maizy (temporarily) slightly sprightlier and my wallet £52 lighter. Only today (Friday) did Maizy managed to climb up the two stairs on the ground floor of the house without standing in front of them and howling for help first so either it was quite a serious pull/sprain or she’s a total big girl’s blouse.

It’s the first time Maizy’s been seriously out of commission and the peace and quiet has been deeply disturbing. Although also having the benefits of, well, peacefulness and quietude. Even the cat has shown signs of distress, bouncing and pouncing, batting her with his claws and biting her neck in an effort to get her to play. But all to no avail: Maizy remained supine, curled motionless on her bed. Lying doggo.

She’s not the only one who’s had her head under a blanket recently. I’ve been in deep denial about how ill-equipped I have been to do my duties at Global Voices. But the sad truth is that I don’t have what it takes to do the job properly. Too big, too amorphous, too stressful, too unstructured, too isolated for my currently compromised capabilities. It’s extremely sad for me. I think what GV does is brilliant and much needed work. I have made really important and enduring friendships and met a huge range of wonderful and notable people, and I am and will remain extremely grateful for the entire experience.

I now have a few weeks transition into a world where a vet’s bill of £52 takes on an altogether deeper significance than heretofore. I enquired about work at the local bookshop the other day. The manager remembered me from the occasion when I interviewed her for a piece I was doing when arts correspondent. The pay, assuming they have a vacancy, which they don’t, is £5.50 per hour.

Now many things can be measured in pre-tax bookshop hours (ptbhs). Maizy to the vet? ten ptbhs. Fill the van with petrol? Seven ptbhs. One cup of coffee, one hot-cross bun and two loaves of (admittedly rather exotic) bread – 2 ptbhs. A frugal week’s food shopping – 15 ptbhs. One hour of babysitting? 1.75 ptbhs. And so it goes, untenably, on.

It’s an interesting problem, that of generating enough money to keep body and sons together (and house and pets and van). But also to be able to do their homework with them, cook them interesting food, tuck them into bed. Small goals. A tiny horizon. More time, less stress. A little life.

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Good things

I had a carefully linked list of recent good things which lead one to the next in a pleasing series of elegant segue-ways and I appear to have deleted it by mistake. Never mind.

The first good thing, which occurred after the demise of the list, has to be the result – a draw, but an honourable one. I speak, of course, of the firstborn’s endeavours on the AstroTurf this morning. He scored the equaliser.

w00000t

Almost as good was the long lens which came with the E-400… not bad for a first sporting shot I thought. Shame his mother hadn’t washed his socks though.

Staying with the family, my gorgeous cousin Jules got married. She’s beautiful. She’s funny. Talent oozing out of her fingertips – acting, singing, directing. And so clever they didn’t have a grade high enough for her degree. I love her.

Here she is giving a specially customised rendition of “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” at her wedding reception.

Jules is a singer

Obviously I want to be her, but it’s rather too late now so I take delight in watching her being her.

And on Monday I had the most wonderful time at Mr Beelicious’ birthday party.

jonathan in another brilliant hat

We met on Holy Island last August where already his excellent taste in headgear was well in evidence. He came from New York to celebrate at Les Trois Garcons. The food was fabulous, the decor outrageous-flamboyant-baroque and his friends so delightful and interesting and funny and sympa.

After eating we were taken upstairs to the living quarters of two at least of the trois garcons which had enough quirk and fluff and spangles to keep me happy for several lifetimes. And an African grey parrot with which I (and others) immediately fell in love. It was a night I hope never to forget, thank you so much Mr B!

To the realm of work. The major excitement for us at Global Voices was the launch of the new Reuters Africa site. It has a feed of the relevant Global Voices content on every country page across the entire continent.

The announcement made quite a splash since it’s the first time that blogger content has been incorporated quite so extensively in a mainstream media site. My friends and colleagues Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman both wrote great analyses of its significance and from openDemocracy came an excellent article by Becky Hogge.

The comments on the announcement article also let me discover the blog of my friend and former BBC colleague the journalist Lara Pawson who is currently in Luanda, Angola, and also writes for openDemocracy.

Hold that openDemocracy thought, we’ll be coming back to oD a bit later. Because this is where the filaments multiply beyond my ability to keep a single thread. We’ll continue with GV and another great thing which is the appointment of Sami Ben Gharbia as our new Advocacy Coordinator. Yes, for those of you with good memories, the same Sami Ben Gharbia of the Tunisian Prison Map about which I waxed lyrical last year.

We stay with the people of GV and move to the lovely Neha Viswanathan, our South Asia Editor (and reader of 3000 blogs). Quite how she finds the time to do anything beyond her work I don’t know but she does. She came over the other day and, despite being a confirmed dog person, fell for the cat big time. She also writes. Beautifully.

Click through to the previous link and you will see a picture of the aforementioned cat. The writing may be a response to or triggered by the picture – in other words ekphrasis. And, delightfully, the theme for this month’s edition of qarrtsiluni is that very thing. You can submit an image for inclusion in the gallery which acts as a seedbed of potential textual inspiration and you can submit “poetry or poetic prose” inspired by any of the gallery images or any other image you choose.

This is where Ariadne’s thread proves inadequate for navigating the maze of contemporary existence. I cannot, for the life of me, knit or even navigate a path from ekphrasis to Bamako, although no doubt it is possible. So I have to invoke the oD reference I asked you to keep in mind, and on your needle, earlier.

Some weeks ago I mentioned going to see the film, Bamako. The next day I interviewed the director, Abderrhamane Sissako, and the executive producer, Maji-da Abdi for openDemocracy. They also happen to be married, Maji-da speaks English and translates for Abderrhamane of whose European languages French is better. The interview is here.

This was one of those interviews where everything “clicked”. I have been privileged to talk to many interesting and inspiring people over the years. Abderrhamane and Maji-da are up there with the best. The more I think about the more convinced I am that everyone should see this film. It’s even had good reviews in the London press – do yourself a favour, go and see it!

This is the downside of infrequent blogging – the complexity of the catchup. However there was another good thing fueling this marathon. Purchased from the recently opened Nigerian wine merchant’s down the road is a delicious Saumur blanc from Saint Vincent in the Loire Valley. Spicy, as promised. Pale amber in colour. Complex. Citrus. A honey nose. And I’ve finished the bottle.

Also, while accentuating the positive, my pictures got some fan mail today. They were pleased, I was delighted. Which reminds me there hasn’t been a picture of ages. Here’s one the boys and I all like called “pollen”.

pollen

Good night!

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Corned beef stew

Secondborn’s school has asked parents to provide a family recipe, preferably with a bit of a story to it, for a cookery book which will go on sale to raise funds.

We have such a recipe – corned beef stew. My mother made it when I was a child, her mother made it for her when she was a child in the days of rationing after the war.

The name has nothing to do with maize, though…

The name comes from Anglo-Saxon times before refrigeration. In those days, the meat was dry-cured in coarse “corns” of salt. Pellets of salt, some the size of kernels of corn, were rubbed into the beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it.

A major component of military rations during the first and second world wars and then a feature of the austerity years of post-war civilian food restrictions, corned beef has long been very much looked down on. Now is the time to reclaim this shunned delicacy with its bizarrely-shaped tins and their lethal mode of opening.

The children love the corned beef stew I prepare for them from an amalgam of memory and experiment. We made it together tonight and took pictures in case the book will be illustrated. You can see the results below.

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Snort snort

It’s the year of the pig. Apparently it’s very fortunate to bear children in the year of the pig because they will be honest and happy. The firstborn is such a one. He is 12 in a few days’ time.

These lights are at Oxford Circus. So much more attractive than the revolting Christmas decorations hanging there last December.

year of the pig

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Roses, sugar and pomegranates

“Are you happy with your choice?” he asked as I straightened up from taking a picture of the serried ranks of roses.

A country accent, bright blue eyes, collar length white hair thinning on top and shabby clothes. He had a petite and exquisitely turned-out woman clinging to his arm. Black high heels, flawless makeup, long black coat. His question seemed serious.

roses are red

“Well, I like the picture but I don’t like the roses” I replied, after a pause for thought.

“Why not?”

“Well, they look far too artificial. Too many petals crushed into too small a space. They look forced, as though they can’t breathe. They’re a bad shape. And the colour,” I added, warming to my theme, “there’s too much dark blue and purple in it. They look bruised. Battered. Attempting perfection and failing.

“I’m sorry…” suddenly catching a glance of the expression on the woman’s face, “these are just my opinions and I’m sure many people feel differently about them.”

“No, I’m interested”, he replied, folding, unfolding and refolding a small piece of paper in his hands, a receipt perhaps.

“But daddy!” the woman exclaimed in a voice which carried not the trace of an accent but betrayed her youth. I realised with a shock that she was in her very early teens.

“There are lots of other roses”, she said. “What about those?” She gestured to a bunch of buds in a sepulchral shade of near black.

“What do you think of them?” he asked.

“Too gloomy. They look like they’ve come off the set of a gothic film.”

His daughter had let go of his arm, presumably exasperated by the sudden complication of what I assumed was supposed to be the purchase of a valentine’s gift for her mother.

“What I’m worried about his how much they’re going to set me back” he said, rather grimly, as he again mechanically folded and unfolded the piece of paper.

“Well, this is Liberty, so whatever you buy will probably be the best of its kind”, I offered as the only consolation against excessive outlay I could think of.

“As well as the most expensive”, I thought as I shook his hand and left them examining the display, relieved he hadn’t asked me what I would choose.

sugar is sweet

Outside the tube station an altogether different approach to the rose trope. What would I choose here? The red-pawed cream bear holding a bunch of artificial roses? the rose-patterned-cellophane wrapped pink fluffy heart with “I love you” stitched in curlicues of scarlet? Or the string of flashing fairy lights twined with a creeper of blowsy rose-red plastic-petalled blooms?

As difficult a decision and no doubt involving products with a similar hefty mark-up albeit starting from a lower base price. Choices, choices.

Tomorrow, valentine’s day, I go to a mediation meeting to discuss the Solomonic topic of splitting the children. Not to mention the property. I’m perhaps not best placed to appreciate the current proliferation of roses, whatever form they take.

and so are you

What I would choose, if I were asked, would be a bunch of pomegranates. Ripe with symbolism I should choose to think of the story of Persephone and the revolving of the seasons.

But I shouldn’t think about it too hard because there’s all sorts of mother-daughter shit which would do my head in. And besides I would be too busy fiddling around trying to eat the damn things. Have you ever tried getting all those hundreds of seeds out?

PS Don’t forget to enter the Global Voices Valentine’s Day Poetry Contest! Even a cynical old saddo such as I might have a go, probably the very best antidote available for rose-overdose.

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Clear the smear

I wondered, vaguely, why recent photographs have had an unintentional soft-focus effect. Yesterday I actually thought to look at the lens of the camera and it was covered with a thin layer of something I can only assume was canine saliva. A great big slurpy deposit which took a considerable time to remove. Note to self – cameras and dogs shouldn’t be on the floor together. Oh, and put on the lens cap.

Thus armed with greater clarity we, boys and dog and camera, set out on a walk. Yesterday was all about sunshine. Beautiful, glorious, peachy, slanting winter sunlight striking from an open blue sky throwing long shadows.

At last a world of subtle gradations and stark contrasts after weeks and months of deepest dullest stultifying flattening uniformity of grey. The camera gambolled like a spring lamb, despite the lack of legs and fluffy tail.

More light and less slobber. A heart-lifting combination.

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The sick bed

the sickbed

They’ve been doing the nursing. I merely provide the fruit juice, aspirin, iPod and light meals. Oh, and the bed.

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Two in the morning

Or 0156 to be exact. There is a noise from the boys’ room. Then a loud and imperious summons. A boy has vomited. He’s proud of the fact that he has not done so in his bed. I’m less impressed that he’s done it over the side of the top bunk all over the railway set laid out on the floor below.

I pad downstairs in search of disinfectant and a bowl. And discover that an animal has shat all along the corridor. With my feet. Which are bare.

In other news, my shoulder is a lot less painful and inhaling no longer results in stabbing sensations. Which means that I am now able to

Continue reading “Two in the morning”

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There’s a red ring around the moon

…and it’s full, I told the gathered diners, and went out to take a picture. My stepmother said it meant rain.

Rain or not it’s the sort of thing that gives great delight if you can actually see it. Away from the bright lights of the big city the sky is full of wonders.

moon ring

The next morning the second-born demanded to see the picture.

“That’s not a ring, that’s just clouds” he said, obviously disappointed that it wasn’t like saturn.

The presaged rain hasn’t shown up, though. It’s been a beautiful sunny autumn day.