For those of you who have this blog emailed to you daily I just want to remind you that after I post my blog I usually spend an hour or so editing it and making additions. Just to let you know. You may be missing essential details. Ha!
It is raining today. Can you believe it?
Yesterday I pickled some beetroot. I cleaned out the drain at the back of the house. I spent another day happily in the garden…weeding. Moving pots of rare shrubs. The strawberries are producing. Delicious. Pottering, just like my maternal grandfather. Picking at weeds amongst the cacti. I like that I might be like him as I get older. For all of his faults he was a good man. From what I can remember.
Perhaps my Mother might remember him differently.
He was useless with money, a real dreamer. I think it drove my Grandmother to distraction. He had asthma and died during an asthma attack beside her in bed. A terrible way to die. Choking to death. She never really recovered. Catholicism unable to calm her. She wasn’t a very happy woman.
I remember visiting my Grandfather in hospital, he was sitting outside in the sun surrounded by huge apricot coloured roses.
There was also a sick clown from Billy Smart’s Circus. He was sewing diamonte buttons onto a silk costume. The clown told me that he would be on television the following Christmas. I held onto that memory for six months. My parents hated watching the circus on TV but I insisted. I didn’t see the clown. He must have died…or lied…or both.
The clown gave me some spare diamonte, I still have them.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=62917
Listening to David Bowie. The boys are subdued. There is a huge cloud hanging over the canyon. The weather is most peculiar.
Last night Tom and Anna came to dinner. We grilled chicken, sautéed kale with garlic and I made a huge salad with Out of The Box produce. Tiny new red potatoes, green beans, free range eggs, olives, a tiny gem lettuce, golden beets. Delicious.
It was a chilly evening so we built a huge fire and gossiped. I felt oddly insecure knowing that Tom was so incredibly successful. I was tongue-tied and felt a bit foolish. For someone who has done so well he is just about the most humble person I have ever met.
Tom brought chicken, Anna brought a huge fruit salad and ice cream.
Finally, a friend of mine called to tell me how much I have changed these past few weeks.
“It’s like being with a different person.” She said.
It’s true. Without the demon penguin possessing me I am just my happily old self. Nothing to prove. I must just tell you…I forgot to mention it before: I had a treatment from a Dutch friend of Jennifer’s. She did this deep tissue massage/healing and made a rasping sound every time she touched me. It was amazing. She said that I was so full of poison she began coughing. Hacking.
The combination of her treatment (I was skeptical) and actually seeing him has done the trick.
Only now when I am out of it I can see clearly just how in my addiction I was. The demon drink, the demon opiate, the demon corn chip, the demon penguin.
It’s all the same.