La recolte
Delectable Pink Fir Apples, and purple fleshed Vitalotte:
New Zealand spinach bed:
Coeur de boeuf tomatoes:
Purple amaranthe:
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dodman
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dodman
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dodman
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slightly
Awwww…. very lovely
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dodman
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decoy
epic cherries!
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dodman
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dodman
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dodman
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decoy
Nice looking sushi. Most professional!
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dodman
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decoy
it’s an outrage!
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pinkie
Awwww! He’s soooo cute though
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dodman
Fantastic news:
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dodman
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dodman
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dodman
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pinkie
Did Tan make those? They’re gorgeous! Can I put in an order for two spring green beakers to match our Chinese teapot? They are sooo cool!
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dodman
No, unfortunately not. They were a present from Mayumi!
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dodman
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dodman
Cold comfort
Room temperature v health risk
* 18-21C – comfortable temperature
* 9-12 or 24+C: Risk of stroke and heart attack
* 21-24C or 16-18C – increasing discomfort
* 12-16C – risk of respiratory disease
* Less than 9C – risk of hypothermia -
dodman
Colonic irrigation
I woke up around midnight, cold, even though I was perspiring freely. Every joint in my body ached. My head throbbed. I was nauseous, my abdomen was cramping, I felt like vomiting and my bowels trembled alarmingly. I thought back to what I had eaten the previous day.
Bread, cheese, ham, oranges – nothing remotely suspicious … unless, that was, I considered the source of that bread, a wholesome ‘integral’ loaf sold in the local market by travellers who didn’t appear to wash.
I staggered down the stairs to the bathroom and had a violently explosive crap. Whatever Sir Thomas got right in the invention of the water closet, he failed to allow for these sorts of event.
The next day, I got up late, tottered down for a shower, clamboured back up the two flights to the kitchen, reeled about in some confusion, and then reached for the sink and retched into it. Up came the remnants of the oranges and a trace of what looked like ham fat. No sign of any bread. The retching was in two spasms, both remarkably unpleasant, seismic upheavals; as if an electrical surge had been administered to my stomach sac.
I returned to bed where I lay contemplating the woes of humanity for the rest of the day and well into the following night. I ate a small bowl of brown rice and drank innumerable glasses of water. My headache stayed with me, as did my cramping stomach and the nausea. The fever left around teatime.
As darkness approached, I ventured downstairs to urinate. I sat to do this as I didn’t altogether trust the dual mechanism of my organs of elimination. In particular, I sensed my sphincter muscle was on a somewhat short fuse and could be activated mistakenly.
I tempted fate by an exploratory suggestion – no more – that that muscle might relax its vigilance. It was as if a switch had been thrown and a gusher of what sounded like water cascaded from me – through me, realistically – into Thomas Crapper’s unsatisfactory bowl.
I cleaned up and crept back to bed, having drunk another glass of water and put one by my side for later. I wasn’t thirsty but I had begun to worry about dehydration. I also took the precaution of donning a man nappy made up of two pairs of underpants and a tee-shirt. I lay awake, listening to the incessant gurgling of my stomach and worrying about cholera. I remember drinking my waiting glass of water and feeling it slide down my gullet, splash into my stomach, and then drain through my intestine, until it came up against the final barrier.
That night, I clenched that barrier tightly as I moved in and out of fitful sleep. Five more times I descended the stairs, sat to urinate, effectively ‘urinated’ again as I allowed my sphincter muscle the luxury of momentary relaxation, and replenished the lost liquid by swallowing beaker after beaker of water, each of which I could hear rushing like quicksilver through my digestive system, until it reached the plug at the end, where it waited, ready to activate the cycle again.
As day broke, I croaked feebly to my companion that what I needed to end this nightmare was – arrowroot! Returning with the miraculous powder, I was administered a half teaspoon, jellified with the addition of a little water. As soon as her back was turned, I imbibed another, more generous teaspoon. I knew what was going on: I had had to wash my man nappy!
It seemed to do the trick. The gurgling was stopped in its tracks, and my sphincter muscle has returned to its default state. I’m eating normally, again, too; but I can’t face the rest of that loaf of bread.
The moral of this story is, along with their deodorant stone and bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide, those in the know should always have access to a small phial of arrowroot powder.
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decoy
it seems that your neck of the woods is festooned with unwashed travellers! Still, as you suggest, your colon will now be pleasantly cleansed, without the expense of an “normal” irrigation.
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dodman
On the roof terrace
Local house name
Mountain view
Strange cloud formation
Almond blossom
Village mosaic
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decoy
Lovely photos. I particularly like mama’s tights!
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dodman
Dos y doce
I noticed a chou chou plant near where we’re living had started to sprout from the root so I thought it might be advisable to acquire a fruit and send it homewards for planting in the polytunnel. I popped into the market and found one with two shoots just beginning, packaged it in a small box, parcelled the box up and took it to the post office. Cost so far, 1 euro for the fruit, 60 cents for the sellotape. I debated with M how much we were prepared to pay for postage and we agreed 5 euros was the limit.
I took the package to the counter and said it was for England. The brusque lady in charge pushed a few buttons on her keyboard and said what sounded to me like 2 euros 25 cents. I thought that was eminently reasonable and said ‘fine’. She checked once more that the price was okay and I confirmed it was. I dug in my pouch for three euros coins, pushed them across, and she shook her head sadly. She then repeated the amount she wanted, which turned out to be 12 euros 25 cents!
I laughed hollowly, scooped up my coins, and indicated she should give me the parcel back. No chou chou could be worth a grand total of close to 14 euros. At that point, I lost her. She seemed to want to explain some personal piece of history that obviously cut her to the quick and bore repeating, again and again, pretty much word for word. I nodded sagely, wondering why she was still holding onto the parcel. She got more and more excited, swinging her arms back and forth, indicating the price on the screen, and then, in an act of desperation, she gave me a leaflet with the various tariffs on it. As I studied the prices, I realised sadly that my parcel, which had weighed in at 517 grammes, would have cost only 4 euros to send had I used slightly less dense packaging, allowing it to fall into the 200 grammes – 499 grammes price slot.
Meanwhile, it seemed M had finally grasped what the lady was saying. She was claiming that she had now committed her machine to accepting our parcel at this exorbitant price, and could not annul the sale. If we didn’t hand over the 12 euros 25 cents, she would have to pay it out of her own pocket.
As an honourable gentlemen, I felt I had little option but to slide over this ridiculous sum of money. In exchange, I got a specious of receipt, that guaranteed nothing, but saw no sign of any stamps appearing. I hung around, increasingly suspicious, as she took up one of those metallic devices used for imprinting names and addresses, made a few impressions on a blank sheet of paper, and then laboriously cut the most faded one of these out with a pair of scissors, and then stuck it on my parcel with what looked like surgical tape. Finally, she flung the parcel in a nearby basket, and looked to her next customer. We were dismissed.
Heading to our eventual destination a few kilometres distant, I informed my companion that whatever our topic of conversation, or during any periods of silence, whatever our thoughts dwelt on, neither of us was allowed to so much as contemplate this absurdly demoralising episode. Needless to say, I could think of nothing else, and I kept repeating, to myself and out aloud, that if only I had got the tariff sheet beforehand, I would have understood the monstrous and questionably legal strategy the post office had decided on concerning the different toll they exacted for parcels weighing less or more than 500 grammes; while M bemoaned how her inadequate grasp of Spanish had meant she had not cottoned on more quickly to the difference between ‘dos’ and ‘daos’ – or whatever twelve is in this incomprehensible lingo.
However, all was not lost. Before we had traipsed more than a kilometre, M found a glittering stash of coinage on the dusty road that precisely lowered the cost of sending this chou chou to exactly 4 euros. Amazingly, we then stopped thinking about our poor fortune and started admiring the almond blossom instead.-
decoy
I guess the overriding question here is: do you really want a chouchou plant?!
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dodman
Log out
A Spanish friend from our previous visit here came round the other afternoon with her two children. We gave them something to drink and M prepared a small dish with some almonds and dried figs for them to eat. The younger of the two was about Orlando’s age and very calm. He played on the rooftop with a couple of nylon hoops that had come as stiffeners with a shower hat and a stick, bowling the hoops around with quiet concentration. The older, aged seven, started out very studiously, arranging and rearranging some geometric puzzles M had made.
Intermittently, they reached out and ate a fig or almond. At some point, I noticed one of the marzipan logs we had brought back from England. Thinking they might enjoy a bite of something different, I sliced off a few morsels and put them in the bowl with the fruit and nuts. The younger boy tried one but spat it out; the older got stuck in and soon polished them off.
By then, he had found M’s skipping rope and was trying it out on the roof terrace. We all demonstrated our prowess and he got fairly excited trying to do five skips in a row. Then he started going slightly wild, attaching one end of the rope to the washing line and swinging it about violently, cackling as he did so, while leaping manically, before falling over backwards. The more often he fell, the more excited he got. His mother tried to restrain him, but he shrugged her off. He began leaping about like some sort of dervish, banging into the walls.
At one point, he launched himself into the air, and almost sailed over the modest parapet that kept people from toppling off the roof terrace onto the ground below. This seemed to ignite his passions even more. I started getting worried; I might end the day trying to explain his death to the authorities. Encircling him in my arms and herding him indoors was like trying to contain a torrent. He easily slipped my grasp and started prising water and gas pipes off the wall. Leaping away as I approached, he ran to the parapet and hopped along it. I grabbed him and bundled him inside.
Eventually, they left, and we considered what could have turned him from a reasonable being of some studiousness into a raving lunatic in a matter of minutes. Smoothing out the wrapping from the marzipan log, all was revealed. It contained a trivial percentage of almonds, an abundance of sugar and sundry other highly enervating additives.
Be warned! -
dodman
A good selection of photos. You had thick snow in Billingshurst! Surfing at Bracklesham Bay, I assume?
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decoy
yes, bracklesham. v cold and no sign of a decent wave!
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dodman
We set off in search of these fabled pools knowing no more than that they were on the outskirts of Granada. When we got to Santa Fe, we started asking passers by for directions to the ‘agua caliente’. Somewhere in the ‘campo’, we were told. After an hour or so of driving up and down the same old roads, I suddenly caught sight of a sign marked ‘banos’. I swerved off the road, and pulled up alongside a Rasta haired girl with an enormous earring who was lugging a backpack. It turned out she was heading for the same place as us, so we offered her a lift. She was strangely silent as to the exact direction we should take when we came to the first fork in the road; she didn’t seem to understand our broken Spanish. We took a guess and turned right down a dirt track. Everything was indescribably muddy, as it had been raining for two days non-stop. We pulled up at a barricaded house, and while Michelle got out to ask for directions, I swivelled around to inquire whether the girl spoke English. No, she didn’t. French, perhaps? Indeed, she did. In fact, it turned out she was French. She told us some garbled story about living in Barcelona, coming down to Granada with friends, who had since legged it to Morocco, and having driven to the ‘banos’ at night – hence, her uncertainty about the route.
As we droved down ever more ridiculously muddy tracks, slipping and swerving wildly, I began to understand why car hire companies exclude damage to the vehicles underside from their insurance. When, finally, we had no choice but to stop, our tyres wore a two inch crust of clay that denied them any semblance of grip. Michelle and the girl got out to see if they could see anything over the brow of a nearby hill. They were looking for ‘vans’. The girl had said the pools were delightful but ‘un peu hippie’. I got out to have a short stroll around. I took a dozen paces, only to find my flips flops had become encased in a shroud of glutinous clay that got heavier and heavier until finally the thongs snapped off! Squelching back to the car barefoot, I began to despair. Would I ever be able to turn the car around? Lost in this godforsaken place, even the allure of steaming hot pools of fresh spring water faded.
The girl finally got through to her friends on her mobile, but they only had time to explain the bare outline of the route we needed to take before their batteries died. We headed back to Santa Fe, me gunning the engine over the boggy bits and wondering how soon, and where, we could ditch our passenger. Very soon, we became hopelessly lost again, but by a stroke of fortune, we spied two Italian vans in a layby. They turned out to be current residents of the ‘banos’, and after some negotiation, we followed them there.
I’ve seen many a van in my time, and many a collection of vans with their unwashed occupants, their mangy dogs and their general air of menace behind the jovial exterior. This place was not untypical. Generally, out in the world, I feel somewhat ’underdressed’, but driving into this mud splattered valley, festooned with scores of travellers and their vehicles from every European nation, in our squeaky hire car, freshly shaven and wearing pristine trousers, I didn’t. The girl jumped out, to join her friends, explaining that the ‘pool’ – I was only momentarily disheartened by her use of the singular – was over a nearby hill, leaving us trying to decide where to park our car. I was having unpleasant flashbacks to some film I had seen or book I had read where a car is left in a dodgy area for about five minutes which is more than enough time for it to be stripped to a bare chassis by the time the owner returns.
The muddy ascent to the hill was made less agreeable, especially in bare feet, by the sheer quantity of dog shit everywhere, which was of much the same colour and texture as the earth. At least, I assume it was from dogs. Add to that a plethora of broken bottles, disgarded garbage and sullen looks, and the suspicion I was beginning to harbour that the fabled series of rock pools, with steaming water flowing from a delightful moss encrusted source, into a succession of large basins for lounging in, might not materialise, hardened by the moment.
We struggled to the top of the hill, and slid down the other side. The rising stream from an undeniable ‘pool’ of water was momentarily exhilarating, but the extreme depth and stickiness of the mud, the fact that a hippie tent enclosure more or less surrounded us, and the realisation that this pool was a man made, rather small, distinctly murky hole in the ground, fed by water spouting out of a rusty standpipe, brought us up short.
Gamely, I strode to the edge, trousering my wristwatch in preparation for stripping naked and sliding into what from the smell was unadulterated sulphur water from the depths of the earth; but looking around me, I lost my nerve. A thuggish type was leering at me from behind a nearby tarpaulin, I had just avoided stepping on a splintered bottle neck, and even now, I thought, our hire car could be being shredded. I momentarily bathed my muddy feet in the scorching water, before returning to the mire.
We hurried back by a less muddy path, passing a large number of French vans. Our friend was there and waved to us. ‘Un peu hippie’? Yikes!
It was only once we were well on our way that we realised this couldn’t possibly have been the place we were looking for. No regular Spaniard could have known about, still less recommended, somewhere so deeply ‘alternativo’. So, we’ll go back and take another look, during dryer weather.
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decoy
sounds fairly pestilential!
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carotte 10:25 pm on 09/07/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great stuff! 3 combs?? in pristine triangles.
decoy 8:37 am on 17/07/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
impressive combs!
pinkie 10:10 pm on 18/07/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow! Amazing triangles. How long did they take to build those?
dodman 3:03 pm on 19/07/2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Almost overnight. They worked as a team, eac bee hanging on to the one above, with the topmost layer clutching the wooden bar with their mandibles.