Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Celebrate.


For Angus it's just another Tuesday morning .


For Bob it's a chance to celebrate the start of the best day ever.


Sophie is now 99% recovered. She's still drinking and sleeping a lot.


We head off en famille to the market. Enormous Gladioli 5 euros a bunch of ten.


Some fresh fusilli from the pasta man ( illegal tastes of burnt lasagna for the PONs )


On the way home a traffic jam. A farmer in an old Renault saloon has had two or three pre-breakfast beers and has headed off home down the wrong side of the road. He refuses to give way to the long line of traffic coming towards him. There is much beeping and swearing before he reverses into the flower bed in the middle of the roundabout. He gets out of his car and makes rude gestures to each of the cars that blocked his way. He does this for a full ten minutes. A passing British couple with a caravan look perplexed. They avert their eyes from this latin display of emotion.

The fact that Angus ( two dogs at his feet ) stops to watch this display - and is completely entertained by it - is another sign that he's turned into his father.


This is a trailer for the surprise movie hit of the year in China. A story of 11 Buddhist pilgrims who ( for a variety of reasons ) walk the 1200 miles from their village to a sacred mountain in Tibet. They wear thick yak skin aprons and have wooden boards tied to their hands. Every ten yards they raise their hands to the Buddha then fall to the ground and touch the earth with their foreheads. They repeat this process through sun and snow for the full 1200 miles. Serious men in dark suits tell me pilgrimages like this still happen in the far West but not in Beijing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY7UKhJ9NE0




8 comments:

WFT Nobby said...

Are we sure the farmer ib the old Renault had not been eating some of that illegal burnt lasagne?

Wishfully Thinking said...

meant to tell you; elsewhere on the interweb just after your alarm with Sophie, I came across the same thing with an OES in the States. They used an ordinary epi-pen with adrenaline. Their dog has established allergies

Heda said...

So glad Sophie is making such a rapid recovery and that Bob is again his happy self as per usual.
The one and only time I was in Tibet was mostly spent in a hospital bed due to altitude sickness. Three huge benefits. I learned about the kindeness and competence of hospital staff regardless of the fact we had no common language. I learned that it is possible to be perfectly comfortable in well below zero temperatures without heating and with open windows provided there is thick bedding, Have since lost all fear of cold. And finallly I learned to appreciate the beauty of Lhasa because my bed in intensive care had an amazing view of the Potala Palace.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
Hoorrrraaahhhh Sophie!!! ...and to score lasagne too, albeit charred, makes life worth the living, right?!

Yes the Tibetans (and others) do still use this pilgrimage 'tapas' (austerity); the film was made in 2015 by a Chinese man, but it took till this year for his own country to pass it for showing there... glad to hear it has been a hit! YAM xx

Swan said...

It's good to see "happy Bob " again. He does carry the responsibility for all of you on his shoulders.

Unknown said...

It lifts my spirits to see Bob so carefree and plucky Sophie almost recovered. Wait until that 1% kicks in.

Bella Roxy & Macdui said...

Nothing like a bit of street theatre. I suppose in the US someone would have shot him.

Coppa's girl said...

What fun you have in deepest France Profonde...
I thought it was only we Brits who drove the wrong way round roundabouts on the Continent!