March weather. Blustery with intermittent showers. Although brief these downpours can be surprisingly heavy. Sophie is still not entirely sure that her new 'spikey' and manageable haircut is right for this weather. The grey skies mean that Angus once again postpones opening up the church porch. It's unlikely that we will get any visitors on a day like this. We'll revisit this decision mid-morning.
The stand in staff at the bakers are still churning out croissants that look the part but fail to live up to their promise. I'm guessing the dough isn't being folded frequently enough. Another 6.8/10 day. Sophie gives the curly ends the benfit of the doubt and awards them a tail waving 12/10. No need to show our Covid app this morning. The last of the pandemic measures have ended. A surprising number of folk, like Angus, still seem to be wearing masks. Based on purely random and entirely unscientific observation it seems that mask wearing might be an age thing. Few if any under 40's sporting them.
Back at home the family diva chases a C-A-T along the full length of the rain drenched laurel hedge. She returns soaked to the skin and requires a brisk toweling down prior to a restorative napette. Life is never dull. She snores gently. The sound of quiet , C-A-T dispelling, contentment.
5 comments:
Sophie does seem to be expressing pure contentment in that last photo. I found the design of the Mexican hotel a bit forbidding - maybe it's related to the "cooling methods achieved through innovative building techniques rather than through air conditioning"? The video of the pianist made me cry.
The Mexican hotel brickwork is striking. Not homely or welcoming, but it has a distinctive appeal.
The pianist in Lviv also brought tears to my eyes.
Yesterday I had coffee in the park with my stoical German friend Margaret, born 1935. She admits she's been suffering flashbacks to the terrifying time in 1945, when she and her mother fled west across Austria amid stories of Red Army atrocities against the defeated civilian population. When they reached the Americcan occupied zone south of Munich the children were bombarded with chewing gum not missiles.
March winds can do terrible things to a girl's hair! Poor Sophie, but she seems to have weathered the onslaught, and after the curly croissant ends, she looks so contented on her comfy bed.
The pianist made me well up too. Life looked so normal in the video and yet for them it can never be the same.
Many years ago I had a German/Russian friend married to an Englishman she met when he was doing his National Service in Germany. Her father was German and her mother Russian. Her father was a lecturer at a southern German University in the 1930's. Because of his radical views he was arrested and never heard of again. My friend and her mother and sister remained in Germany during the war, more or less hiding out with his family. When the Russians advanced, they made their way east, towards the advancing army, intending to seek passage back to Russia. At the last moment my friend (aged 15!) decided to move west towards the British or American zones. She'd heard a rumour that they would all be imprisoned once inside Russian lines. Her mother and sister went ahead and she never heard from either of them again. Later she found, via the Red Cross, that all those on that march were shot. The excuse to commit such an atrocity was that any Russians who had lived or worked in Germany, or with any German connections, were considered the enemy.
Lisa said it all this morning. Some days, it would be nice to trade places with Sophie and not think about all of this, just the cats.
Hari OM
The bricks, if indeed locally sourced as said in the write up, work well with the environment and the slightly Aztec design, too. It's the concrete floors/steps and inner walls that I find lacking in appeal.
That piano has been getting quite the workout, national anthem, classics, and mood musics such as this. The instrument appeared last week - nowhere to be found is who actually placed it there. Glad they did, though... YAM xx
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