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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.

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February photo challenge: 23rd Feb, Shoes

No, these are not my shoes, they are my son’s.  You can see my shoes in the photo of 21st February.

My son favours one particular style and buys them all from an American shoe store online.  To my surprise he has never been disappointed with his purchase, and they always fit.  There are five pairs in this photo and several more in the cupboard.  He has different colours for different life themes.  The pair with pink trim were purchased when he had a girlfriend with pink hair.  But now that he’s no longer with her, he has adopted a more rugged look.  He started at university this week, studying physics, and this morning he went out in a khaki shirt and the camouflage pattern boots.

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366 unusual things: days 49-53

18th Feb – Doing some exercises in the book How to think like Leonardo da Vinci:  Seven steps to genius everyday (Michael Gelb), I noticed after a few pages that the cover of my notebook, a gift from a son, says ‘I have nothing to declare except my genius’ (Oscar Wilde).

19th Feb – Removed a metal and glass shower door and replaced it with a rod and curtain.  The splash of the shower is no longer tinny and echoey, but soft like rain on porcelain.

20th Feb – This morning a Housing tenant, the one who exposed himself to the ATM camera at the local shops, is getting into a fluoro yellow hatchback in a fire-engine red business shirt, a blonde woman at the wheel.

21st Feb – Today I noticed that I have 22 followers, many of whom I’ve never heard from.  They follow me like shy phantoms.

22nd Feb – A few weeks ago I ordered some fabric online for the first time.  I wanted this dark red organza with orange and yellow checks, as it is in the sample online.

The online sample
Organza surprise!

But this is what I got:  a bold gold cage embroidered onto look-at-me red.  With turquoise and cream triangles.  It was one of those ‘ha ha ha, well, that didn’t work’ moments.

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February photo challenge: 22nd Feb, Where I work

I sometimes work in various people’s homes as a tutor, so I can’t show you those places.  But most of the time I work at home.  I run a household and I translate.  At the table on the deck out the back I translate passages by hand, and then at the desk at the front of the house, I type it up.  In the first stage, I need four items:  a French novel, a French-English dictionary, a pad and a pen.  When I’m working at the outside table, this is what it looks like:

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February photo challenge: 21st Feb, Fave photo of me

Rodin’s Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais, Auguste Rodin, 1889) in the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia here in Canberra is my absolute all-time favourite sculpture.  For me, the burghers can make a bad day better.  And a good day ticklish.

I sometimes come to the sculpture garden just to sit and write.  Behind these gum trees there’s a lake and beneath them are bushes where blue fairy wrens jump and scrummage on the ground around the benches.  Magic.  I stop at Rodin’s burghers on every visit and think about the action and life he sculpted into inanimate rock.  This is not ‘still life’ like most sculpture.  I love that about the French.

This photo was taken a few winters ago.

Burghers of Calais, Auguste Rodin, National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden