Oddbox Soapbox... Madcap Moments with la Fhina...

What does the Oddbox Soapbox reveal to us this week, mes bloggy loves?

The tallest man on the planet - at 8'1 - Incroyable, non?

A manifesting robot that you can use to check out what the neighbours' barbequeue looks like, and how dark their patio stain is?

Motor-racing and mania in hand-built carts that look like First World War 'planes! What would yours look like?

The Irishman and His Castle - Get your envelope filled in now if you want to find The Irish Man of Your Dreams - And remember to include a return address?

Kite-flying in fields, together with the French pretending to be clouds - I'm a Cirrhus Discombobulus - What are you?

Whistling-mad Indians with balls of steel!

Clive the Cat - All claws and whiskers - Found 3 years after he went missing - Beautiful, non?! Would you have come forward to collect such a 'claws-first' kinda cat, mes bloggy pet-lovers? I do wonder!

And finally mad manic cows run amok in a supermarket, chased by mounted cowboys - Animal Crackers, or what?!

CLICKIE

Au Chat Noir...

Back to the wonder-walls of Chez Fhina... The veritable Palace that it is!

Are you surprised to find that I have this image in my home, with my spiritual home being la belle Paris, mes bloggy kittens?

I first saw this poster adorning my employer's bedroom wall in rural (very rural) Normandie... I loved it, and was intrigued by it. This was years before I was to live with a black cat and all his eccentricities...



Now, I will never be without this image, this sentinel, this icon, my virtual 'Familiar', as it were... Counterpoint to my White Witch aspirations.

La Wiki whispers in my shell-like: "Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, frequently referred to as just Steinlen (November 10, 1859 – December 13, 1923), was a Swiss-born French Art Nouveau painter and printmaker.

Born in Lausanne, Steinlen studied at the University of Lausanne before taking a job as a designer trainee at a textile mill in Mulhouse in eastern France. In his early twenties he was still developing his skills as a painter when he and his new wife were encouraged by the painter François Bocion to move to the artistic community in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris. Once there, Steinlen was befriended by the painter Adolphe Willette who introduced him to the artistic crowd at Le Chat Noir*** that led to his commissions to do poster art for the cabaret owner/entertainer, Aristide Bruant and other commercial enterprises.

His permanent home, Montmartre and its environs was a favorite subject throughout Steinlen's life and he often painted scenes of some of the harsher aspects of life in the area. In addition to paintings and drawings, he also did sculpture on a limited basis, most notably figures of cats that he had great affection for as seen in many of his paintings.

Théophile Steinlen died in 1923 in Paris and was laid to rest in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre. Today, his works can be found at many important museums around the world including at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., United States."




*** Le Chat Noir ("The Black Cat") was a 19th-century cabaret in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard Rouchechouart by the artist, Rodophe Salis, and closed in 1897 (much to the disappointment of Picasso and others who looked for it when they came to Paris for the Exposition in 1900)".

Teenage Terrors...and the Fridge as Punch-Bag?

I first posted this over at my other blog-share, Mad Manic Mamas back in early August... I know some of you might not visit it, for you may not relate to our horrific tales and manic celebrations of Parenting Teens, so I hope you don't mind me re-visiting this subject here because I liked the post, and I was doing the wailing banshee thing again a short while ago, when Grizz failed his driving test for the second time, and came in to the house furious, and punched the fridge...

Still, and bizarrely, the light within the fridge started working again for the first time in six years, so 'Every cloud has a silver lining...', eh??!

You'd like living with me, you would...

There's never a dull moment in the Fhina household, I should cocoa!

"Teen Terrorists turn your life upside down... They do!

One morning you are pressing out Playdough shapes with a cookie cutter, and pretending to have a tea-party with a woodland full of stuffed bears and rabbits....

...You are wondering when the next episode of Postman Pat is on TV, or Thomas the Tank Engine with Ringo narrating - Because it is the 'be all and end all' of their wonderful, energetic, fabulously adorable little lives...

The next moment, you are SCREAMING LIKE A BANSHEE out the back door after them, as they run for the school bus, late as usual...

You're reminding them, albeit FAR FROM GENTLY, that they ABSOLUTELY MUST go to the Sixth Form Study Centre TODAY to register for UCAS, or else they WON'T HAVE A CAT IN HELL'S CHANCE of ever getting a place at University next autumn; Even if THEIR will IS strong enough to win against the establishment through SHEER STUBBORNNESS...AND they don't even CARE that you got a LETTER home from the Head Teacher saying that this was IMPERATIVE, and that YOURS was THE ONLY CHILD IN SCHOOL STILL TO REGISTER!

...And just the other morning, when you were putting in your new daily contact lenses at the kitchen bench, because it offers the best light in the house, and you blinked the liquid away, and you focused on the middle distance, and suddenly you realised that he was standing right next to you, silently, in all his naked glory, waggling an ear-bud in his ear, dampened and glistening from the shower...

Quickly, you check that the New Mum Milk Lady isn't outside on your doorstep, copping an eyeful of his man-like, David, beauty, while waiting for her payment for the week's milk delivery, juggling the bairn with the semi-skimmeds! ...And you thank the angels that the neighbours aren't gawping at the soap-drama unfolding before them through your (unusually for you, Fhina!) fantastically clean windows...

And you comfort yourself that no stray country birdwatchers ('Twitchers') have their high-powered lenses trained on your kitchen window...



Because there he is, in all his glory... As naked as the day he was born...

And what goes through your mind is whether you could still pin a nappy (diaper /napkin for our Over the Pond listeners!) on his ass - The great 6' 4" galoot that he is!

Oh, life was far simpler then... Wasn't it? When you could exert a little more control over their lives... And they weren't continually 'upping the ante'...

And you looked more like this... 'Armless...



...and far less like this veritable banshee..."

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...

Please be patient with me, I have taken down what I had posted for today - The harmless piece of frith-froth that it was, to apologise for not coming to see so many of you as often as I normally would...

There are major things going down in my life right at this point, which I have been rattling and trembling about for weeks to be fair...

I don't know whether I'm coming or going - Or where I've been - I want to be here, and I want so much to be THERE - with you, but I have to be somewhat focused on the mad, manic stuff that's going on chez Fhina right now...

So, please excuse the heated up, ready-made posts that will roll out over the next few days -

La Fhina is going AWOL, to try to sort out her life...

Adieu mes bloggy amis... Je vous aime... Tous! Mwah! Hope that hearty kiss shall tide you over. Mwah! Just sneaked another one in. Watch that lipstick - Oops, too much lip-gloss, I know...

Six Word Saturday...

I believe in angels and miracles...



Blessings

Art by Sulamith Wulfing

Cowboys and Kisses...

I just wanted to stop by and say to you, in a week that has been mad and manic and life-enhancing and maddening, that I am very grateful to you for your thoughts and your wishes on me and mine when I was dawdling on the parapet threatening to throw myself off the roof a la Dame Rochester (Jane Eyre reference - Look away now!)...

I think, as Bold Sir Dumdad mentioned, that I have been suffering a dose of the Bloggy Blues, and I promise to respond to you all very shortly, to all your wise, wise words...

I have decided after a short spurt of pre-posted twitterings here, to beat myself up less about blogging, to post less to give you less to worrit about and me to fret about reading, and to spend more time reading and commenting on YOUR blogs, which I love and have sorely, sadly missed these past months since I returned to full time toil in April...

I must admit that work and all its madness and mindless politics has got in the way of my thought processes and has infected my sanity, (thank you, Bloggus Inspirus!) - I need to focus on what matters, and not on what is troubling my troubled mind...

More laters, after 7 October, when my existing postelettes shall expire, perspire, respire, and I can talk to you real proper-like, and give up on a rum deal and love you (and me!) more...

Anyhoo, for the meanwhile, what is it, about Cowboys and Kisses and their universal appeal?

I have to share a little anecdote here... Fhina also has a thing for Firemen, and on Saturday we drove past a local Fire Station which was festooned with balloons and two fireman were standing outside in full regalia clutching placards...

I read the notices, 'Charity Car-Wash' it said. 'I want my car washed by Firemen in Uniform!', I wimbled pathetically to my, apparently temporarily deaf, husband...

He looked at me scathingly. I had a hairdresser's appointment to go to, or else I would have insisted we turned the car around to go back to have our vehicle slathered in foam and lovingly hand-washed 'til squeaky clean by Men In Uniform...

(Well, if it had been Supermodels in Bikinis I'll bet we would have been 'in like Flynn!'

OFFICIAL VIDEO

One of the most original artistes we've seen in concert as a family is the American, Anastacia...

Recovering from breast cancer, she had to time-space-time her performance; She rested on the stage and sat de temps en temps, so as to conserve her energies...

Anastacia was tiny, pocket-sized even, charming and beautiful and powerful and talented, and demanding, and wonderful and energetic and ultimately, life-enhancing...

'I can't keep on living life like this
Up and down in and out
I wonder, is this world just a cowboy and a kiss?
Or should I choose another?'

And she ended her concert, by urging us to 'Make a Difference.'

Is that too much to ask in life, mes bloggy love-hearts?

I don't think so...

Parapluie Revel...

I've temporarily come down from the parapet at Crawford Towers, to tell you how much I love this colourful image... I saw it recently on a home improvement programme, in a home in Chicago, and I remembered how the colours and deco style appealed to me. I looked it up, as it has been long months since I was able to trawl around shops at will - I didn't get around to doing that much, really, while bringing up Grizz and nursing my sorry back, but I do like museums, art galleries, art shops, poster shops, that kind of thing...

Usually, whenever we travel abroad, I find myself bringing some form of poster, or postcard art, back with me... Sometimes they survive the journey, sometimes they don't... That's the sorry thing about buying art in disreputable corners of the world...

Over the next few days, much like the lovely Derrick does in his 'Saturday Spotlight', I shall explore some of the images that grace the walls of my home...

(That is, they would do if we had redecorated and actually had affixed them to the walls!)

Courtesy of ma soeur, la Wiki: "Leonetto Cappiello (9. April 1875 in Livorno, Italy – 2. February 1942 in Cannes, France) was an Italian poster art designer who lived in Paris. He is now often called 'the father of modern advertising' because of his innovation in poster design. The early advertising poster was characterized by a painterly quality as evidenced by early poster artists Jules Chéret, Alfred Choubrac and Hugo D'Alesi. Cappiello, like other young artists, worked in way that was almost the opposite of his predecessors. He was the first poster artist to use bold figures popping out of black backgrounds, a startling contrast to the posters early norm.

Cappiello had no formal training in art. The first exhibition of his work was in 1892, when a painting was displayed at the municipal museum in Florence.

Cappiello started his career as a caricaturist illustrating in journals like Le Rire, Le Cri de Paris, Le Sourire, L'Assiette au Beurre, La Baionnette, Femina, and others. His first album of caricatures, "Lanterna Magica," was made in 1896. In 1898, he moved to Paris, and his caricatures were published in Le Rire for the first time.

Cappiello made his name during the poster boom period in the early 20th century, with designs markedly different from premier poster artist Jules Chéret. His first poster, for the newspaper Frou-Frou, was made in 1899. He signed first contract for posters with printer P. Vercasson in 1900. He was married to Suzanne Meyer Cappiello in 1901. Between 1901 and 1914, he created several hundred posters in a style that revolutionized the art of poster design. Cappiello redesigned the fin-de-siècle pictures into images more relevant to the faster pace of the 20th century. During this period, Capiello continued as a caricaturist.



During World War I, Cappiello worked as an interpreter in Italy. Afterwards, he devoted his career fully to poster design. In 1919, he signed a contract with publisher Devambez and he remained with the agency until 1936.

Over the course of his career Cappiello produced more than 530 advertising posters which surprise and delight the viewer. Today, his original posters are still collected, sold at auction and by dealers around the world".

What is the truth?

...Aha, I recall 'coming around' after a drug-free childbirth, (blasted National Childbirth Trust!), speaking to my (not-yet-mother) midwife about the pain and upheaval during childbirth being a conspiracy by women against women!

Not in a mad, raving, salivating way you understand, but more by patiently and calmly implying that we do not know what the hell it is we will go through during childbirth.

Alone.

Because we each go through it on our own, whether there's a partner there to 'share the burden' (really?) or not - And no-one can or will tell you what it's like... No-one, not even your dearest friend. The one who said she'd share everything with you. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

So we harbour and hold our embroidered chinoiserie dressing gowns to our bosom and expanding waist-line, and we pack our shining hand-mirrors, (what are they supposed to be for, again??!), and cotton-comforting, (i.e. not opening-at-the-back in a big-arse-revealing way), pretty night-gowns to our bare souls, while we are stripped of any dignity and sense of self by the bold, cold medical profession who prod and poke and provoke and pry and rarely pamper mothers during The Act of Childbirth (First Act).

And then, post-partum, we find ourselves again, in life...

Piece by piece, nerve by shattered nerve, in the beauty of being a mum and loving our bairns unconfeckingditionally...

In spite of being terrified, horrified. Battered and knackered... Worn-out and worn-in, cut and severed...

And we live...and we breathe, in and out.

In and out...

And we learn about life and how tough it really is out there in the wide, wild wilderness, and we fight for our kids, and we scream and we hurt and we bleed.

And we cry for them. Out loud... And we love them.

Them and us. Against the wide, wild world.

...And then they become teenagers... and you seriously wonder, is it too late to have them adopted?!

I kid you not! (Second Act).

In the end there was love and loss and loneliness...

~Once my postings were rambling and incandescent things...

I spoke more of me, although apparently enigmatically... This was artlessly achieved... I did not try to be artful. I was just being mad old me. Folk stopped by to comment. I love that!

And I wibbled about fate and The Fates, time and tide, love and loss, myth and misses, and loads of good folk arrived to comment...

And now? I write swiftly and hurriedly of loved and my much-beloved things. I squeeze all of this beauty (a mon avis - in my opinion), edutainment, extravaganza and just Plain Piffle between a full-time job, shoddy parenting of a Truculent Teen, reading like a book-worm, slobbily writing to-do-lists, and generally turning into a sloth-like critter about the house.

Stuff and nonsense. Music and melody. Love and longing...

And I wonder why do you stick around -

(Why do you come here? How did you find me?)

- You whom I love - When I scarcely meet the standard of my earlier, more full-time, blogging episodes. I am not worthy...

I am sooooooooooooo not worthy...

So few people seem to stop by these days to talk, and I wonder why... I was feeling a little dampened when I wrote this, so sorry for the wibbling out loud...

Go, ask me some questions, please? At least then I'll know whether it's worth carrying on, (...if anyone cares apart, of course, from my dahlinks, (you know who you are!), who keep me from scaling the rooftops in search of a place to perch and plummet!).

Suzanne...for you know she's half-crazy... A little bit like her, a little bit like Fhina...

One of my favourite songs is this one, Chelsea Hotel No. 2 by Leonard Cohen, in which he sings about his fleeting relationship with the wild spirit that was Janis Joplin.



"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."



Happy 75th Birthday, Mr Cohen... May you live long and happily.

You May Run On For A Long Time...

Ma soeur, the Wikidly Wonderful Wiki told me, 'Since 1939, The Blind Boys of Alabama have sung a fervent blend of traditional and contemporary Gospel music. Much has changed during these seven prolific decades. Stylistic phases have waxed and waned; personnel has come and gone. 78 r.p.m. records have given way to LPs, followed by eight-track tapes, cassettes, and CDs. The Blind Boys’ audience – once rigidly segregated and confined to traditional Gospel venues – now reflects the group’s eclectic, global following, while their repertoire has expanded to embrace secular songs with a strongly spiritual message. Such wide acceptance is also evidenced by four Grammy Awards, an honor that didn’t exist when the Blind Boys started out. Even so, the Blind Boys’ lengthy saga remains a steadfast testament to constancy. Singer Jimmy Carter, who was there when the group was first formed, leads the band today with the firm conviction, joyous commitment, and gravitas that befit an elder statesman'.

I am not religious, in spite of being given my name in the Church of England church and having my child baptised there... Y'all know I have Pagan and Mother Nature-style leanings instead, and yet there is something about the wonderful Blind Boys of Alabama that speaks to the channels of my heart and the depths of my soul...

“What would I tell young people who might think about singing Gospel music?,” Carter concludes. “Well... I’d tell ‘em that The Blind Boys had to come up through certain degrees.

Sometimes it was rough. And if you’re going to go into Gospel you’re going to have to do the same thing. To stay in this field, it takes dedication, you have to be dedicated, because there’s a lot of wear. And I thank God that the team I got now is dedicated. We want the people of New Orleans to be dedicated, too. And, like that Mahalia Jackson song says, if we could help somebody in New Orleans – help them by singing a song, help them by recording ­this album – then we will feel blessed.”

Snippets borrowed from Ben Sandmel...



You may throw your rock and hide your hand
Working in the dark against your fellow man
As sure as God made the day and the night
What you do in the dark will be brought to the light
You may run and hide, slip and slide
Trying to take the mote from your neighbour's eyes
As sure as God made the rich and poor
You gonna reap just what you sow...

Me? Messing About On The River...

Go see the other participants in Six Word Saturday, round at Cate's, now she's got back from her hols... At least I think... The nerve of the gal!

Second Hand Rose...

From Bringing Up Charlie, The Darling Dotterel

1. your second boy/girlfriend?

The adorable 6' 3", "Tiny." Otherwise known as Stephen, he was my first love, really, but was my second boyfriend before he tootled off away from home to Uni in the days before t'Internet, mobile telecommunications and me being able to drive... He came back to our home town at some point that term, recovering from pneumonia of all things, by which time I was going out with the boyfriend I can only refer to as The Rotten Sod for all his treatment of me then...

Tiny picked me up (stout, sturdy Fhina!) in his arms and walked down the High Street with me one evening... I've been longing for that warm, all-embracing, feeling ever since, but The Rotten Sod was not best pleased.



I worked with Tiny's sister much later in life. I always admired her. She was strong and wild and survived tragedy in her love-life to raise four beautiful daughters... I learned all about his life since me. He had three sons... I wonder how my life might have been different if we had had the opportunity to be more 'together'... But, well, there's no regrets. What's the point?

2. your second day at school?

I really can't remember - My earliest memories are of tapping a pine coloured wooden tambourine with silver jangling circlets and playing in a large (to me!) Playhouse in the school gym... I must have been drawn to be like Stevie Nicks from a very early age.

3. who your second best-friend was?

I liked Linda a lot... She was a proper brain-box and boys loved her when we were teens... She succeeded in going out with two of the boys that I fancied from afar... I never begrudged her 'getting there first,' as it were with them... One of them, Andrew, a talented artist, was to tragically commit suicide a year or so after they'd broken up. His mother found his body. We never learned why he chose to go, but it broke both our hearts.

Linda didn't do so well in our exams, nerves getting to her. This was a real surprise to all of us, and I think she chose to go into Nursing. I hope she is having a blissful life.

4. the second LP that you bought?



I think it was probably Abba: Arrival... I was a big fan of ABBA before The Police took their crown and their poster-place on my bedroom wall... I thought they were the height of sophistication in this image, and I grew up with their amazing music. Magical. I had a particularly soft spot for Bjorn!

5. the second house you lived in?

As a child, I probably lived a lot in my maternal grand-parents' home, when not at home with my parents. My grandparents were Jack and Nellie. Their home was full of love, piano playing, my nanna's home-baking, and my granddad drawing and testing out the grandchildren's mental arithmetic - I still get goose-bumps now thinking about those tests - I never did very well!

6. the second car you drove?



That would be my tiny Nissan Micra, which shrank to the size of a match-box when Grizz was born and I tried to fit the baby-buggy in the boot - I never managed it, so we had to sell it thereafter! We also moved house in the end, as the baby's things filled every room in our adorable, 'though tiny, Highland bungalow. We overlooked the wonderful Dovecote adjoining famous Culloden House.

7. your second-favourite band?

Lordy-lord... Probably Calexico...



8. the second-best book you ever read?

Back to books... Definitely Persuasion after my beloved Jane Eyre. Bit of a cliche, aren't I?!

9. your second-favourite film?



I really love Little Miss Sunshine, and it's got even better with subsequent watchings. I love practically everything Toni Collette has been in.

10. your second-favourite blog?

Ooh, that's a difficult one - I guess it would be my Second Home, here at Mad Manic Mamas - Have you been there yet?

Feel free to have a go, mes bloggy loves... Courtesy of the Darling Dotterel!

Don't be shy now that Fhina's spilled the beans!

Ray LaMontagne

Raymond Charles "Ray" LaMontagne (pronounced /lɑːmɒnˈteɪːn/) (born June 18, 1973) is an American singer-songwriter who lives on a farm in Maine with his wife and two sons. Reportedly, one morning at 4 a.m, when he heard a Stephen Stills song, "Treetop Flyer" LaMontagne decided to quit his job at the shoe factory, where he worked 65 hours a week, to pursue a career in music. He has since released three albums, Trouble, Till the Sun Turns Black and Gossip in the Grain.

I saw Mr LaMontagne last Wednesday - Do you see my heavy eye-lids? Fhina's never out on a weeknight! Not only did I mislay/never receive my ticket, I also had to blag my way in past the Box Office Gals showing my online confirmation and my Driver's License! It worked...

Except the long queue of folks trying to enter the concert hall thought I was trying to skip the queue. If it'd been a Motorhead concert I could've been lynched!

Fhina likes to cut it up rough, to live dangerously to the depths of her Wild Heart...

In reality, I'm pretty reserved and English-polite, so I was very red in the face at that point...

What is there to say? As ever, Ray was entertaining and life-enchanting, enigmatic and generous to others and his fans... He even thanked us all for paying to come to see him in such difficult economic times...

He was supported by Ethan Johns, his producer and son of the legendary producer, (of The Eagles, The Beatles, among others...), Glyn Johns. Ethan was very cool and talented, but he was playing to about a dozen of us in the audience. Why do people do that - Not turning up to see, often very wonderful, support artistes?

Josh Ritter followed, performing to around half of the audience as it turned out, and I was blown away by him and his band... I bought his latest album in the interval, and I've been listening to it ever since.

In conclusion, what better than to listen, while Ray sings to you of Trouble and being saved by a woman, with his heart and his soul?

A Fine Name Game Meme from Chez Lime...

Name Game Meme...

1.Your rock star name (pet, current car)
Smookoo Cross-Trail (Beats Fifi Trixibelle don't you think?!)

2.Your gangsta name (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe)
Phish Food Mary-Jane (There's something utterly non-menacing about that gangsta, non?!)

3.Your Native American name (favorite color, favorite animal)
Pink Meerkat (A few too many days in the desert could do that to a girl!)

4.Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born)
Ann Mona Taylors (Ann Morpeth just wouldn't sound right, would it - So I chose the hospital where I squawked into being)

5.Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name)
CRAFH (Sounds a little too close to crap for Hollywood success, do you not think, my bloggy loves?)

6.Superhero name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
Red Guinness (the (red) Black and White Crusader-ess)

7.NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers)
John James or James John (Sounds manly non?!)

8.Dancer name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Pomegranate Noir Tunnock (Diametrically opposed classes in life there!)

9.TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Fifth Grade? Do you know how old I am and how much of school memories I've blotted out over the years?! Laissez-moi think...

... Ta-da! Welsh Washington (News you can rely upon!)

10.Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Summer Tulip (She'd get past any security with a monicker as cutesie as that one)

11.Cartoon name:(favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now)
Strawberry Cardigan (You can see her now, can't you? Gamp at the ready, just like Miss Marple!)

12.Hippie name (what you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Buttered-Toast Weeping Willow (Now there's a name to contend with - I love it already!)

13.Movie star name (pet, street where you lived)
Cat St. Albans (Step aside Buffy Saint-Marie!)



At this point, Lime shared a few choice names of people she'd met, so here goes:

* A Scots Lass called Bridie Pie... (In Scotland a Bridie can be a type of pie - So she was 'Pie Pie')

* My sainted late mother had to stop her best friend, whose surname was Carr calling her first-born son 'Ford'

* I answered the 'phone to a Mr Pigeon, who insisted on spelling his name for me (I'm that stoopid!) and then made sure I pronounced it a la Francais, 'Pee-jee-on,' as opposed to how it should be pronounced as in Coo-coo-de-coo Mr. Pidgeon!



* I know a man called Argument, and that's the only person I've ever met with that surname, but my colleagues say he lives well up to his name...

* I've worked in Jobcentres/Employment Offices so I've met Mr John Travolta and Mr John Wayne in the past... Friends had once signed a guy on for benefits from South Shields (by the sea-side) who called himself Sand Dancer... He was pretty mystical, they said...

Is that enough for now? Have you any for me, mes bloggy Viggo Mortensens?

Ooh look! Strawberry Cardigan has just lost a charm off her bracelet!

I'm also over at the Mad Manics today, mes bloggy Wort-Berries - You might wish to take a look - I'll be glad of the company, mes amis xox

Love In Black & White...

If you love someone enough in this rollercoaster, ghost-train, rumbling cake-walk, that we call life...



You can



Set them free...

(I guess this goes for Parenting Teenagers too?! You have to learn to let go of them a little bit at a time, it seems... Exponentially, in fact...

Ooh, that's a big word for Fhina these days... I almost choked on it!

Grizz is planning to take his Third Driving Test later this month...

Wish him luck!

Meanwhile... Me?

Oh, I'm sitting in a darkened room somewhere, rocking back and forth in an attractive way, of course, and clinking worry beads together, plus those Worry Dolls that you can buy from Developing Countries. My pockets are filled with them! And I'm fiddling with a rosary despite not being of the Catholic persuasion, (but I always imagine, like some Literary Grande Dame in the style of Baudelaire or Maupassant, that I'm likely to undergo a Deathbed Conversion, while sipping a whiskey tumbler filled with Bach Flower Rescue Remedy), bien sur!

Book Review - Rose Tremain - Restoration...

Restoration by Rose Tremain - Not only I, but the book-shirking husband read it on holiday...

Robert Merivel goes on a journey of experience in 17th Century England, choosing to court the court of King Charles II and on the way finds himself in love and out of love, in lust, and in lust again, with a variety of bawdy dames...

This is a colourful and tangibly authentic romp through tempestuous times - Politics, Plague and The Great Fire - as Robert contends with the dawning reality of his shallow self, finding truth and salvation through his growing selfless deeds and the King's laissez-majeste, finding his humanity and salvation along the way.

This is an often funny, post-apocalyptic paeon that has much of a message for our shallow, image-obsessed times, methinks.

Sweet Home Alabama...

With this posting, I am bearing to you my very soul...

We've had remembrances and memories this weekend, have we not - Out there in the great universe, with another anniversary of 9/11...

And you know that I had to watch my sweet uncle's passage into the final tunnel of love and light recently, right? And lost my beloved dad to the very same incredibly invasive and bone-crushing cancer three years before? So, this latest time was like passing through a mirror image of losing him again, in many ways.

Well, this for me is the song I want to emblazon upon my final passing...

"Sweet Home Alabama". Do you think it strange, mes bloggy tabernacles?

I love this tune, the chequered history of the band, the tragic tales of its members, and this wonderful song's bold and cheeky lyrics...



Especially the refrain,

"Sweet Home Alabama...
... I'm coming home to you!"

Ca suffit non?!

GJ knows my wishes, this and the Empress, la Stevie, singing of her Landslide, will call me home...

"Take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down..."




Je vous jure...