Friday 31 July 2020

Long Weekend!

Goodness me. Blogger has changed its interface without warning. But thank heavens, I have found a message from Sinead (not Siobhan), accent on the 'e'. She's fine, and I want everyone to know that I always put in the accents on the names in my work articles. 

I do not like changes in my technology because I am a bear of very analogue brain. Sometimes I miss simply typing out my ramblings and circulating them among friends at church and school. An Eighties' Child, that's me. 

Apologies to everyone who has sent me comments in the past month that I did not see. I will go through the com boxes and respond. 

Meanwhile, it's the August Holiday long weekend in Canada, and I opted for the Canadian Bank Holiday Mondays (as B.A. usually had to work the British ones), so I am free! That said, my break from the computer lasted as long as it took me to make a blackcurrant vodka cocktail and have a look at the explosion of fluffy purple flowers in my garden. It looks like an invasion from space. 

I told a colleague that today was supposed the hottest day of the year in Scotland, hotter than Lanzarote. At lunchtime B.A. and I walked to the parish church in the sun and then to the ice-cream store. It was marvellous. My colleague asked how hot, and I looked online to see. 75 F. He then laughed merrily, as he is in Virginia, where it is in the 90s but the humidity makes it feel like the 100s. 

Now I get to think about what to do with my time now that I don't have to read or write news. Naturally I will study Polish, read Italian, and finish a book I'm reviewing. I will make some suggestions about a pupil's "Chapter One," and I will even write a "Chapter One" myself, so as not to make my students do anything I'm not doing myself. I will read up on New Criticism, so I can get some insight into what it is that I am teaching decades after being taught it myself. 

I will do some housework--the hard scrubbing and hoovering stuff, not just the dishes and the laundry. Oooh, I think the charity shops are open, so I can have a real rid-out at last. 

For the moment, I'm on the stoop at the top of our stairs and I've just had a chat with the downstairs neighbour. She's says she's back at work at the hotel--just 15 hours a week to keep her in chocolate and Gin-and-Tonic.

"Life's little essentials," she said. 

The marvellous thing about our street of row houses is that every flat has its own private garden. Several of them--including ours--are full of washing, as the neighbourhood takes advantage of 75 degree weather. You would think that the Scots would all invest in drying machines, given our usual weather, but no! Well, perhaps the New Town can laugh off the utility bills, but we cannot. 

Anyway, B.A. and I may go on another country walk although this is not certain as the poor man has developed plantar fasciitis. He can no longer bicycle, and he refuses to be put in a bicycle trailer, so our options are limited.  

Now I will read your comments--I hope.

3 comments:

  1. Seraphic this video has been on my mind a lot, what do you think is going on here?

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/MYFC05DGkVKW/


    Sinéad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I've seen this video before. It was filmed long before the pandemic started. In short, an eccentric couple were trying to proselytise in a health food story and they were asked to leave by the owner or manager. They got very excited. Then they threatened online to go on a hunger strike. It has nothing to do with Covid-19.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you! I find it hard to believe that you can be sectioned for threatening to go on hunger strike though. Whatever happened to the Guards coming round for a quiet word and contacting your GP to check in on you?

    The Nuremberg Defence of the oestrogen filled policemen turns my stomach. Stand over what you're doing, have a rationale for what you're doing or resign. If you do the wrong thing for what you think is the right reason that's one thing but a man with power hiding behind his mother's skirts so to speak is pathetic. What have we become? I don't know why it frightens me more when men behave like that but it really does frighten me.

    Sinéad.

    ReplyDelete