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366 unusual things: days 79-83

19th Mar – Just read that Abraham’s first recorded words are his instruction to his wife to tell a lie, in order to save his own life.

20th Mar – Paid for access to George Sand’s Story of my Life.  Translated from French.  1585 pages, 72 chapters, 65 translators.   Apparently the largest group translation outside the Bible.

21st Mar – Heard Libby Holman singing Body and Soul (1930).  She occasionally uses the OSV word order – object-subject-verb:  ‘My life a wreck you’re making’.  Like Yoda from Star Wars – ‘When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmm?’

22nd Mar – Went to tutor at a house where nothing is thrown away.  Found a note to myself that I dropped in the yard last year, a reminder to get The Scarlet Letter from the library.

23rd Mar – Ran into a man who told me his wife, whom I’ve known for 10 years, is teaching French at the local primary school.  As a Francophile, I wondered how I could have known someone for 10 years and not known she speaks French, so I had to ask, ‘Does she speak French?’.  ‘No,’ he said, ‘she’s learning it at the Alliance Française.’  Hope she’s a few lessons ahead of her students.

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366 unusual things: days 74-78

14th March – Yesterday I saw a young blind guy walking with a black Labrador guide dog.  Today I saw him again closer-up and realised I knew him.  I remembered him spectacled and dogless.

15th March – Saw through the rear window of a parked 4WD about ten plastic heads with moveable jaws.

16th March – Offered my figs to a Saudi woman, thinking of her other life she lives, like an Israeli fig-loving friend of mine, near the cradle of civilisation, near the Garden of Eden.  But she doesn’t like figs.  At all.

17th March – Was given a chance to learn German online for free.  I said yes.  A mature decision for me, having hated Hitler’s language since childhood.

18th March – This morning I read two 19th-century stories:  The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant and Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol.  In both, the woman values her existence only when she is pretty and attracts wealthy men.  This afternoon I read in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey:  ‘If the mind be but well cultivated and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.’

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366 unusual things: days 69-73

9th March – In a Chinese restaurant, I wanted the “Catch of the Day” until I saw it swimming in a tank.

10th March – Walked up my son’s driveway through a litter of apples fallen from a tree.  I looked up, hoping to pick one, and indeed there was only one on his side of the fence, but it was too, too high.  The fruit-laden branches were on the neighbour’s side.

11th March – In an alternative café, an old wall vent has had its screen removed and replaced with four brass taps.  Vent art.

12th March – Last night at midnight we called the police about a party outside the government flats.  This morning I read in Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë, an old cottager’s thoughts on the desirable consequences of being nice to unpleasant neighbours:  ‘the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree – to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them.’

13th March – Busy selecting potatoes in the supermarket, I heard the sound of heavy leather slapping the floor behind me.  When my bag was full I turned round and found a large wallet, but no one close enough to have dropped it.  Handed it in.

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366 unusual things: days 64-68

4th Mar – I read on my father’s army service form that he had blue eyes, a revelation to me;  I never looked him in the eye.  My mother and three siblings have brown or grey eyes.  I have blue eyes.

5th Mar – A rural commentator on ABC Radio today said he wants ‘action, not just antidotal stories’.

6th Mar – Just heard Cupid by Sam Cooke.  Sam asks Cupid:  ‘Draw back your bow and let your arrow go straight to my lover’s heart’.  But Sam loves a girl who doesn’t know he exists.  She can’t be his lover then, since a lover loves.

7th Mar – Thought about a mentor’s advice to use ‘perhaps’, not ‘maybe’.  Saw ‘maybe’ in an article and found myself mouthing ‘perhaps’, which purses the mouth with its two p’s and a sibilant s and a breathy h in the middle.  The song Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps just wouldn’t work as Maybe, Maybe, Maybe.

8th Mar – In a bookshop, I searched for the translators’ names in three editions of Madame Bovary.  The most expensive, a Penguin edition, gave a translator’s name;  a cheaper Penguin and the Collins edition made no mention of translators.  Perhaps Flaubert wrote them in English.

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366 unusual things: days 59-63

28th Feb:  I felt the pressure of words when I read, across the rear window of a ute in front of me, in large white Gothic lettering, ‘Justify your existence’.

29th Feb:  When I go into homes to tutor, some people tell me to leave my shoes on, even on rainy days on fully carpeted floors.  I never see them barefoot.  Others won’t let me step inside until I’ve removed my shoes, even when they have tiled floors and the day is icy.  I never see them shod.

1st Mar:  Tonight when I was in the shower, a police car gave its siren a short sharp burst right outside my bathroom window.

2nd Mar:  All this rain (4th day) is bringing out garden weirdness.  Today my foot just missed a 7-inch long leopard slug;  a large caterpillar crossed my undrying washing like an omega Ω;   water-retaining crystals used in the drought have jellified and are oozing up out of pot plants and creeping over the sides.

3rd Mar:  My son said to his boss today:  ‘I’ll just take this back out the back then I’ll be back.’


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February photo challenge: 29th Feb, Something I'm listening to

Pauline Croze has a voice that comforts me;  a little bit husky, a little bit of a lisp.  She sings clearly and not too fast so I can sing along with her, following the lyrics to practise my French. The jazzy rhythm helps me remember the words;  it’s also great for chair dancing.  Sometimes I dance on my feet (when no one’s watching).

When I took the photo of this CD cover, an energy-efficient light bulb overhead made her skin too pale.  I grabbed a piece of the red organza (see post from 22nd Feb), set the camera timer and held the fabric close to the light bulb.  It’s given her a bit of a tan.

I recommend her album even if you don’t speak French.

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February photo challenge: 28th Feb, Money

Two sides of the same coin.

My father brought some coins back from the Middle East in 1942.  I like this one with its Art Nouveau flourishes and the hole in the middle.  I hang it by a chain on a wrought iron bedstead.

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February photo challenge: 26th Feb, Night

The “English Bridge” at night:  the bridge itself is partly visible if you click to enlarge the photo.  The lamppost is on the bridge but the buildings are to its left.

The “English Bridge” in Cairo was also known by its French name, Pont des Anglais.  A few decades later it was nicknamed Kobri Badi’a after Madame Badi’a who taught belly dancing in a cabaret near the bridge, and then in the 1950s it was known as Evacuation Bridge for the British who were being chased out of Egypt.  Its Egyptian name is Kobri Al Gala’a, or El Gala’a.  In the middle of the day, it opened to let the feluccas pass through.  See my post of 7th January for a photo of graceful feluccas on the Nile.

“English Bridge”, Cairo, c 1942
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February photo challenge: 24th Feb, Inside my bathroom cabinet!!

I don’t have a bathroom cabinet, I have a shelf.  Actually, half a shelf, since my other half has the other half.  Here’s a photo of some of the items on my half.  The red perfume bottle and its reflection became an obsession and I took about ten photos before settling on this one, then cropping it.  Against advice, I used the flash for two reasons:  without it, the camera told me with its little warning hand that I shake too much;  with it, my shaking is forgiven, and even better, the bottle is animated and fiery.