This is what I found awaiting me in the lounge this morning…..

The following arrived in my “forwards” this morning…..

ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2013 EUROPE

From JOHN CLEESE

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ‘s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbour” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels ..

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be right, Mate.” Two more escalation levels remain: “Crikey! I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.

And as a final thought – Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC.

Life is too short…

I just hope this wholesome pair will not be corrupted by Andy and Flea!

Chris and I usually take a while over breakfast (meagre as it is nowadays); it’s one of those times when we discuss any little problems and what we’re going to do for the rest of the day. This morning we talked about our recent switch from meat to beans – our leanings change from meat to beans like the wind (don’t mention that word!) – and we bemoaned the fact that we both managed to put on weight overnight in spite of the fact that we hardly ate anything yesterday (a few bran flakes in a small cereal bowl for my breakfast, my famous veggie bean dish in tiny bowls for our lunch, one slice each of cheese on toast for tea and…half a giant bar of dark chocolate for supper!). We simply can’t understand it!

We’re having visitors this weekend and Chris had  promised me previously that he would have the new en-suite shower ready for use by then; the trouble is that he’s not really a plumber – he’s an ideas and marketing man – so he has to work things out for himself, having taken the appropriate books on plumbing out of the library. Last Saturday one of my nephews vexed us slightly by talking about “Health and Safety” issues (he works in “Planning” for a town council), which we will, of course, uphold to the letter (in case you’re reading this, Bob). Luckily, Chris is clever, and  over breakfast he assured me that the problem with the fitting of the shower, which kept him up very late last night, will be surmountable providing there is enough pipe, enough space, the fastest drying sealant, the right screws and he can jiggle it somehow (if I understand him correctly, which would be a first!). Anyway, you kind of get the picture, I hope.

So we were at the table, having our bran and oats for breakfast; we neighed and mooed a little and we discussed the problems concerning our diet, the beans (we’re going to give them a miss today – more dark chocolate please, because it’s healthy), the shower, and the Health and Safety issues (probably need to have the gas boiler serviced soon too). Suddenly Chris laughed and said…

“I think I have ze ultimate solution… Forget girlie boot camps! Why don’t we concentrate on a camp for slimmers? We’ll focus on ‘Belsen Beaux’; the fire-guards will protect with paint-ball guns; the safe-guards will dampen their spirits; barbed commandants will keep them within parameters; your bean dishe swill, at the same time, keep them going and entertained – ‘Gone Like the Wind’; any complaints about the beds will be ‘hard to bear’; and with a bit of luck the slimmers might decide to forgo their daily showers…”

Chris will say anything to get out of tackling a little plumbing job! Luckily for our guests coming this weekend I have read about “pester power”. But perhaps I’ll tell you more about that another time…

Today’s title may well make you wonder what on earth I’m going to write about. I hope you won’t be disappointed to learn today’s blog post has nothing to do with “Truth and Triumph Tattoo” parlour – the best place to get your tattoos – in Dayton, Ohio; and I don’t wish to test your grey-matter with a treatise on Thomas Tomkinson’s great work, “Truth’s Triumph”, written in 1676 on the subject of “the fundamentals of the faith” (although a peek at Wikipedia this morning informed of the book’s depth and sounded particularly interesting, especially with regard to the controversial concept of God having a physical form); and classical music lovers may be somewhat down-hearted (if you had started to get excited) to find that I am not going to discuss (except in passing) George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth, produced in three different versions across 50 years of Handel’s career’.However, I must add that on my diversion into YouTube to seek out the delights of the said oratorio I came across something wonderful and someone wonderful…

The wonder was Simone Kermes singing Handel’s “Piangero la sorte mia” (from Guilio Cesare) with the Venice Baroque Orchestra at Shwetzinger Testspiele (2010). Not being a classical buff in the slightest, I knew nothing of the music or the soprano, but I was captivated and moved to tears. Check it out on YouTube and see if I’m not wrong.

Now back to the “Truth and Triumph” that I thought might amuse you today. On Sunday Mary, my sister, returned from her weekly car-boot-sale outing with our Mum and said….

“I have a little something for you and Chris, Sally – it cost me nothing.” (Naturally it was in her car- boot!). “You and Chris love games – don’t you?”

And we do, at least I do, and Chris obliges me by joining in, otherwise there would be no-one for me to play with. So last night when Chris asked if I wanted to play Chinese Chequers, I surprised him by suggesting that we play Mary’s Truth and Triumph game instead. Chris pulled a face but I was so keen that he didn’t have the heart to refuse. The box was like an old treasure chest, brown as oak, and had “Truth and Triumph” printed in gold capitals in the centre – nothing else, no indicator as to what could be inside – and the edges and corners of the box were worn and  a bit ragged. Chris left it to me to open it – well, I was the keen one – but we were both interested to know what was inside. Firstly, there was a stiff, quite nice quality board (so it was a board game) with a dusting of powdery mould on the back (not used that much then…), underneath that was the instruction manual, and beneath that four brown boxes with gold lettering – one was entitled WISDOM, the next THE CHURCH, (I began to think it a little different to the games I’m used to ….) THE LIFE OF CHRIST, and finally (as if I needed any more confirmation about the theme), the last box said THE OLD TESTAMENT; then there were the counters, the score cards and the dice.

“Perhaps it’s a game for nuns or old priests,” I suggested.

“Let’s play Chinese Chequers,” Chris suggested.

“Come on, let’s give it a go for a few minutes,” I encouraged, “you should be better at it than me because your granddad was a minister.”

Chris usually reads the instruction guides for everything in the house but on this occasion he let me do it because I was the one who wanted to play. I hate reading instructions so we ended up playing our own version of it (good job too, otherwise it would have taken all night!). It transpired that the game is very similar to Trivial Pursuit but with a religious theme. I threw the dice first and landed on a LIFE OF CHRIST question card.

“What kind of place was Christ’s tomb situated in?” Chris asked.

“A graveyard.”

“No, what KIND of a place?”

“A nasty place, out in the wastelands, away from the metropolis… a sort of cave… with a big rock in front?”

“No, I don’t mean that. What kind of land?”

“Barren land – very rocky?”

“Definitely not rocky,” Chris laughed (he alluded to Rocky, the handsome Texan in my book), “It starts with a G…”

“A GGGarden – the hanging gardens of Babylon!”

“No, the gardens of…?”

“Gethsemane?”

And so we played on for over an hour, helping each other through the difficult questions. Perhaps my favourite question was….

“What did John the Baptist wear?”

“Hemp” (I thought that sounded sufficiently coarse and uncomfortable for such a pious man), “or sackcloth, if you prefer?”

“Nope”

“It can’t be something nice like cotton, it must be an animal skin – goats wool?”

“No, but you’re on the right track.”

“Lion skin!”

“No, it’s…. c… camel…?”

“Camel skin!”

“No, silly girl, it’s camel hair!”

“Of course, everyone knows that!” I said.

In truth, I can’t remember any of the serious questions – they were way over my head; in triumph, I answered two questions correctly by guesswork; in disgrace, I answered one by cheating – I saw the answer on the other side of the card!

The wear and tear on the box must either have occurred through overuse of the surface as a good push off for Tiddlywinks or there is another scenario…

Picture, if you will, an evening at the nunnery. Young Sister Teresa Mary goes to the cabinet that stores all the  board games; in-between Scrabble and Cluedo is a brown box like a treasure chest, which is dark and mysterious (only the older nuns know what lies within); yet again Sister Teresa Mary slides the box half-out and looks around at the others (busy rug-making or sewing tapestries), and she asks, “Would anyone like to play Truth and Triumph for a nice change tonight?” All hands stop working and all eyes look horrified, but no-one dares to speak, except for Mother Superior who says, “Let’s save that for a special occasion, Sister, I’ve been looking forward to a good game of Scrabble all day – who’s for Scrabble?” There are sighs and coughs, and several nuns kiss their rosaries. Thank God for Mother Superior!

Well, that was a busy weekend, far too busy for me to find time time to write my blog! Apologies to those of you who were disappointed, assuming that some of you missed it, (which you probably wouldn’t have noticed, had you actually been in Dawlish because you would have been so caught up yourself in everything going on – if that makes sense!). As you can tell, there was a good reason for my absence – at first I was too busy and then I was too tired. You see, Saturday was the much anticipated, and highly advertised, Dawlish Air Show day – the day that everyone for miles around descends on Dawlish; it is the one day of the year when we dare not move our car from its space outside our house, when the seawall and the cliff paths are filled with people hoping for a good view of the display, and when we invite all (or as many as can fit) of our family and friends to join us on our terrace for a “Royal Box” vantage point. We had eighteen adults on the balcony and seven children in the garden!

I must admit, that after twenty years of seeing air shows, I’m not quite as excited about the whole event as I used to be, marvellous as it is… which is just as well because I hardly saw any of it.  Each time I went down to see how the children were faring in the garden I told them how lucky they were to have comfy chairs, drinks and food – unlike the people they could see below us lined up on the seawall for hours with no home comforts. Two of the seven children were stalwarts and stayed downstairs throughout, in spite of the temptation to do the opposite to what they were told to do – bravo! Towards the end of the display I took some shots of (not AT) the “Hurricane” aircraft  (so noisy it brought me out of the kitchen) – thought you might be impressed to see photos of the huge plane that looked too heavy to fly, but as is so often the case, the results are singularly unimpressive owing to the lack of dynamism, scale and sound. Sadly, as you can see from the photos, it looks no bigger than a model plane…

With only two days to go before book club, last night I thought I had better start reading “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” or I would have nothing to discuss on Sunday afternoon. I’m very glad that I belong to our little book club, not only because our leader bookworm is an absolute “vision” (as some of us ladies regard him), but also because a book club makes you read more, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have revisited Tom Sawyer without a nudge in that direction. I had vague recollections of the book – wily Tom getting his friends to whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence, and Tom and Huck getting scared by events in the graveyard – from when I first read it in my primary school days. I had forgotten how funny, well-observed and well-written it is. I was chuckling away in bed last night, so much so that Chris had to put away his “Private Eye” and listen to me read aloud Tom’s antics in church, and school, and home with Aunt Polly – of a Monday morning pretending to be on his death-bed with a “mortified” toe!

The tale is still funny and maybe I appreciate it even more an as adult. I don’t know if modern children could possibly relate to Tom Sawyer’s childhood – all that freedom, yet so little in the way of possessions (a window sash and a brass knob being prized above all else – such as a beetle kept in a cap box); stifling giggles in church, but fearing the wrath of God; being pulled by the ear and not feeling hard done by, and still feeling loved without needing to be told so ten times a day! Tom Sawyer reminds me of lots of little boys I knew during my own childhood, living in the Australian bush, and he even reminds me of myself in those days…

One day I was “in the doghouse” for some reason or other and I felt very sorry for myself; as usual, I wondered if I had been adopted (because I had fair skin and pale grey-green eyes while the rest of my family were dark and brown-eyed). In disgrace, I had been sent to my bedroom to reflect on my misdeed (whatever it may have been – probably hitting Henry, who was a great pain at times, though I loved him dearly) and it all seemed terribly unfair (probably because he needed a good punch on the arm or a bit of Chinese torture). After my initial tears, and feeling better (having come to the conclusion that I was adopted), I decided to teach my unfair family a lesson – I would run away from home, not far and not for too long, just far enough not be able to be seen and long enough to make them worried for my safety.

So I snuck out the house without being seen, took my bike out of the shed (Dad had recently taught me how to ride so I was about eight years old), and rode down our dirt track road. I cycled all the way down to the creek at the end of Molle Road but I didn’t get off – I cycled back almost to home but not quite, close enough to see through the bushes and trees that nothing was going on, no mad panic… nothing. So I cycled back down to the cross-roads and this time I went up and down Chelsea Street, occasionally getting off to check out hollowed out trees that had fallen down (because the soft rotten part of a tree, when collected and mixed with water, made excellent red paint). In this way I passed what seemed like a good two hours and it was getting dark – surely they would be sorry by now and fearing for my well-being out alone in the dark on the unlit bush roads? Yes, the lights were on inside as I crept up the back steps to the kitchen door. I stood awhile behind the door listening to hear the anticipated anguish of those inside. It was a stable door (the horse had bolted) and the top-half was shut so I couldn’t hear well, just the normal murmur of conversation – no crying, no despair.

As quietly as possible, I opened the door, closed it and stood in front of it – I was like an apparition suddenly there amidst them.

“What are you doing there?” Mum asked disappointingly unmoved by my appearance (I had thought she might scoop me up in her arms and kiss me).

“I’ve just come in. I’ve been out on my bike for hours. Didn’t you miss me?” I asked, nearly in tears.

“Good Lord no, I thought you were in your room,” Mum said, “You mean to say that you went out… all on your own…and didn’t tell anyone?”

I shook my head and the tears came.

“You naughty girl, off you go to bed – and without any dinner,” Mum was cross.

I howled in my bedroom and Mum came in a few minutes later to kiss and hug me.

“Now dry your eyes and wash your hands before you come in for dinner,” she said, “you don’t know how frightened I was just now when I knew you had been out on your own…”

And I knew I was her’s and that she loved me, and I understood why she had been mad… she didn’t have to say anything more….

Last week when I was over in Shaldon, across the river from Teignmouth (not a million miles from here), I met a gentleman pushing his “babies” in the dual buggy. Now I normally take a peek at babies as I pass by and that day was no exception. Imagine my surprise at seeing such a hairy duo! Oddly, they didn’t take after their father in the slightest – he was as bald (and as silly) as a coot!

Andy and flea are unabashed. Thankfully, they’ve toned it down a bit since I read them the riot act.

At present I’m re-reading Oscar Wilde’s famous novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” although I should be re-reading, “The Adventure’s of Tom Sawyer” for book club next Sunday; in all likelihood you are familiar with the story about Dorian Gray’s fantastical portrait which kept changing for the worse, taking on the imperfections in the handsome young man’s character, and becoming unbearably ugly – great story. Why is this relevant to me and my blog today, you may wonder. I will tell you…

Yesterday morning I received a card from a friend. The card has a picture of a Van Gogh painting of a golden field of wheat on a windy day with vibrant clouds and lively trees, and a caption – the words of Vincent Van Gogh – “I dream of painting… and then I paint my dream”. The words hit home and reminded me of an occasion “yonks” ago (well before I married Chris) when I saw a wonderful television programme all about the Everglades in Florida. Previously, I had thought about the Everglades as a frightening place filled with dark swamps, sinking canoes, prisoners trying to escape futilely, water snakes and hungry crocodiles… but the programme showed a different side, of tranquillity and magical light. The photography was stunning and I was so impressed with a particular scene of the sun shining through the mangroves, and the dappled shadows on the water, that the next day (after thinking about it all night) I thought I would paint it from memory.

The oil painting started out well and I was happy with the lovely light shining through the trees and casting pretty reflections and shadows on the water; the next day I was not so pleased because I noticed that it was getting darker. I tried to fix it, to no avail, the painting had a will of its own. Another day passed and the painting got darker still – I couldn’t understand why my impressions had changed so much and I wasn’t happy with it. By the last day of painting I rather liked my creation because it fitted my mood… and the day after that I had my periods!

Strangely enough, my ex-boyfriend at the time saw the painting and instantly fell in love with it. He insisted on buying the painting from me, rather against my better judgement because I thought the painting too gloomy for the taste of nice normal people, and it wasn’t representative of my usual style. But what could I do? I couldn’t refuse Chris (his name was Chris too – strangely most of my boyfriends were called either David or Chris – my favourite names! Also handy because I have always talked in my sleep – a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right!). A year or two later I asked old Chris (just to differentiate between him and new Chris, my husband who is actually older than the old one – hope that’s not too confusing!) if he still liked my horrible dark painting. We were often in contact seeing as old Chris also was my neighbour.

“Very much so,” said old Chris, “it is my absolute favourite and has pride of place above the mantelpiece”.

“But don’t you find it dark and depressing?” I queried, “What on Earth do you like about it?”

“If you really want to know, Sally, it’s because, of all your paintings, it is the one that reminds me most of you.”

My look of surprise turned to laughter and old Chris added, “I mean that I can see your emotions in it.”

And that’s why I think it’s rather a coincidence that I should be reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and receive that card!