Friday Reflections. Carpe Diem.

Firstly I would like to thank Mackenzie and Janine for choosing me as their  featured writer last week. I was surprised and very pleased. Next I must apologise as my Friday reflection has become a Tuesday one.

 Last week was a good but very busy. The H3A group here on the Bodrum peninsula was celebrating their 5th Year Anniversary last Thursday and I was busy sewing my  hexis together to put on display. I also had several photos in the photography exhibition. I received many compliments for both the hexis and the photographs.

The two on the left are mine.

The knitting display. Thanks to Cheryl for the photograph.

Whilst there, I also had the chance to work on tomorrows photo homework, "Shadows" The evening light reflecting on the dome of the hamam was too good an opportunity to resist for the Irish contingent.

The Irish contingent play with the shadows.

Unknown to us we were caught in the act by another member of the group who is a very well respected blogger. She lived in Bodrum for a number of years, in the early 80's, and returned again in 2012 to a very changed scene. Back to Bodrum

However it was back to earth, literally, the following day as I struggled to move a truck load of earth. I am making a new vegetable garden. This left little time for blogging and even less energy.

Proof!  My family were in disbelief. The shovel was way to big for me.

A vegetable garden in the making.

So my reflection this week is of lessons learned.

I was talking to a young friend a while ago. He hadn't long set out on a his teaching career. He had just got engaged and life was stretching out in front of him, full of  excitement and promise.

I on the other hand was just about to retire, My life too was in a period of change and for me also full of excitement and promise. As we were talked, I passed a comment about me being lazy. He said he couldn't believe that. As our chat went on I told him I wouldn't want to be young again for all the tea in China. He was astonished, Why ever not? Youth was everything. I replied that I would not want to start from the beginning again and have to learn all of life's lessons again. He then jokingly agreed that my initial statement was correct and that I was indeed lazy.

From the time we are born we begin to learn and these "life" lessons continue until we die. The question is, do we learn or do we repeat the same mistakes over and over again?

When I was teaching, the main message I used to try to pass on to my pupils was, never be afraid to try. It is from our mistakes that we learn more. I think this true for anything. For example, in a photography workshop you submit two photographs, one really good and the other not so. When people look at the first, they say wonderful photo, it may have been just a lucky shot . Looking at the other photo, if you are lucky people may say, you needed to have changed your aperture, ISO, crop it differently etc. It is from this we learn. If we are open to making mistakes to not being afraid to try then we can make our greatest discoveries. How many of us sat in a classroom afraid to raise our hand when the teacher asked a question and then kicked ourselves when someone else gave the answer that we would have given and received all the praise?

But I digress. There are so many lessons I have learned and so many still to be learned. While the above lesson is a very important one, the most important for me has been to "seize the day." Carpe Diem.

Sunrise in Bandipur Nepal.

When I was younger I used to wish my life away. If only I was old enough to join the youth club...... if only I was old enough to go to the discos...... if only I was finished college...... if only I could get a job......if only my babies could dress and feed themselves, if only they could get themselves to their activities, if only the summer holidays would come, if only the summer holidays wouldn't come to an end........ The list was endless.

It also consisted of " when the children are older I will....... when I retire I will......."

I had my children shortly after I married, at what is now considered a young age. By 25 I had three babies under 15 months - I hadn't counted on availing of the "buy one, get one free" offer!  My plan was to have a relatively large family, to have them young and then later enjoy an early retirement, the children would be grown up and independent, if not gone; and then it would be my turn! No empty nest syndrome for me. All plans for the future, I was going to wait 35 years for my day to come,

But then life happened. I worked in a small school. We were a staff of four. My Principal's wife died in her forties, of cancer. My close colleague was in a horrific car accident, with her husband. They turned a corner and a racing jeep, on the wrong side of the road crashed straight into them. They were not sure if she would survive. Then they thought they would have to amputate her foot. Luckily she came through and intact. Then my third colleague lost her husband to brain cancer. Again he was in his forties.

I got a call one day to say my husband had had a "turn" and was in the cardiac care unit of the local hospital. I said I would be straight down. I was told not to move as his boss was on his way to collect me. I was sure he was dead or dying, if not why couldn't I drive myself? Luckily it was not a heart attack. He was sent home the next day and told to watch his diet. A bad attack of gastritis combined with taking bloods had knocked him out for the count.

This all had a profound effect on me. What were the odds that two of a staff of four would lose their spouses at a young age? That another would be in a life threatening accident.  Tomorrow was not guaranteed. Life, with all it's ups and downs, was sweet and to be enjoyed now. It was time to live in the moment, to seize the day, carpe diem.

I stopped procrastinating and started to make my dreams come true. I began to "make hay while the sun shines" if the weather was good, I would go out for the day. The housework could wait until the  evening  or the next rainy day.I started to live and enjoy the moments, when holidays weren't possible, a day out here and there. Money saved for a holiday abroad became a deposit on a mobile home by the sea. Later,as time went on, this was exchanged for a holiday home in the sun.   Each stage of the children's lives was to be enjoyed, tucking them in at night and reading them their favourite bedtime story. Taking them and their friends out for a picnic by the sea, the excitement as they headed out to a local disco with their friends, waving them off to college, attending their graduations, sitting down at the table with four wonderful young women and listening to them talk. 

I became proactive in my own life. I was never one to look backwards. When I met a setback, I would head for a corner and either have a good cry or a good rant and then emerge with a new plan. My problem was I was always looking to the distant future.  While I still tend to make plans for the future I now find it hard to tell you what I will be doing next week. I let life unfold.

 I have been lucky that as I imagined, I took early retirement.I am now living abroad, in Turkey.  What was a holiday home has become my real home. Somethings are not as I dreamed,some are better,  life goes on. When asked will I live here for the rest of my life I say I don't know, I no longer think in terms of where I will be, what will I be doing in five years time? I don't know. For now I enjoy the view from my bedroom window each morning I wake up. I consider myself lucky.

My morning view.

And I do not worry. I believe we are authors of our own fate. Yes it is true, sometimes we have no control over things that happen. But we do control how we react to them.  I believe that if we seize the moment, then we live our lives fully, the bad as well as the good. So much time was wasted dreaming of tomorrow. Now, even if I dream for tomorrow, I enjoy the day that I have and try to live it so that as night falls I can say, that was a good day. 

Diary of a Desperate housewife.

Do I feel desperate? Absolutely not! I am just a desperate housewife, that is to say desperate at being a housewife. Sometimes I wonder why begin a job that I know I will have to do again tomorrow or at the very least the following day after that!

Housework, I hate it!! I would love to have a nice clean shiny house but I would like it to be the result of a quick wave of a magic wand. Who wants to hoover floors and iron piles of clothing when I could be knitting, out taking photographs, planting the garden, trying out new recipes. or just plain old curl up in a corner with a good book. There are so many things I would rather do.

                          

So I usually clean on an "essential" basis, there are visitors coming or I can't see the table for the pile of ironing. If I don't wash the windows it saves on the necessity for net curtains. It is no co-incidence that this magnet has pride of place on my fridge.

                   

 Recently, a couple of friends came to stay for the night. We had a photo expedition planned for the next day. So I gave a quick whizz around the spare room with a duster and the hoover. Did I mention I live with two cats and they shed hair by the sackful?

Unfortunately, our photo walk had to be postponed. So we set up a "studio" in the their room as the theme of our photography homework was portraits. We decided to use each other as models.  Room set up we were ready to begin. I am trying to break out of my normal "stand in front and shoot" I have been experimenting with angles.  I got down on my knees to take an upward shot. I found the edge of the bed was in the frame. So I suggested we move the bed. Bad move!!!

Most people have heard of the Easter bunny. Well, have you heard of dust bunnies? They sometimes live in corners and hard to get to places in our homes. We  moved the bed. Let me tell you, there were no dust bunnies hiding under the bed. There were dust elephants, rhinos, hippos, herds of them galloping around under the bed. The shame of it. Red with embarrassment, I quickly grabbed a brush and tried to catch them. They wanted to roll around the floor. I had to chase them. Add a cat who thought the sweeping brush was a new toy for him ( He obviously hadn't seen it in action much) I was disgraced.

As for the windows, they were okay, or so I thought, until we reviewed the photographs on the computer. The camera never lies they say. Shame, shame, shame!

The following day, I decided it was time for a change,  not to be such a desperate housewife. I would make my house sparkle and shine starting with the sitting room and kitchen. After all it is officially Spring. Time for a good spring clean. Time to break out the hoover!

I have had a very bad run of luck with electrical items recently. And my hoover was no exception. In spite of cleaning the two filters I could.access easily, it still was not sucking up the dust as before. And I needed every watt of power available to me. My hoover is bagless. I sat and stared at the centre of the cylinder and guessed there must be a way to,access it. But how?

No problem accessing this filter.

Very gingerly I began to twist and turn and pull, afraid that I would worsen my run of bad luck and actually break the thing! Lo and behold, after several minutes of puzzlement, I found a couple of arrows, gave a quick twist and I was in! I had found the main filter.

I gave it a tap. The resulting dust cloud resembled that dreaded nuclear mushroom cloud. But I persevered. I continued to tap away, marvelling that one little filter could hold so much dust. I filled the dustpan three times. How had I not burnt out the motor making the hoover work so hard, fruitlessly.

At the same time I was so proud of myself for solving the problem. I gave the centre piece one final tap. "I must have all the dust out by now", I thought,  Then the top fell off. Oh no, the dreaded curse again. I need to stay away from all things electrical.

Luckily I discovered it too had arrows. Why don't they make those arrows a different colour so they stand out? It would make life a lot easier for anyone like me who is a little slow. I digress.

 The top of the filter was supposed to come off. And you would believe what was inside? It was a whole herd of dust hippos.

 After one final clean, I quickly reassembled the Hoover and tried it out. It almost lifted the tiles off the floor it was working that well. I finished the hoovering, did the dusting and steam cleaned the floor. Not even a dust spider now to be seen, never mind the bunnies.
I should have taken photographic evidence of a job well done. Instead I collapsed spreadeagled on to the nearest couch, too tired to move. A whole Saturday gone, if not wasted. But my sitting room was sparkling. I am not a desperate housewife. You could eat your dinner off my floor.

         

 What a pity it was such a waste of time. Two days later it needed to be done again.

But now the sun is shining, time to gather up the hexipuffs, head out to the garden swing, sit in the sun and keep on puffing. Until the next emergency clean up.

A small collection of the hexis

P.S.  Ironic or what, my car is a Dacia DUSTER!

Friday Reflections. I couldn't imagine living without......

 As I make myself sit down to write this post, the first thing that sprang to my mind is ....."INTERNET"

The next thought that came to mind was how shallow is that?  But then you have to look at why I couldn't imagine life without the internet.

I grew up without internet. There were no mobile phones. Friends abroad were penfriends. I remember getting contact lists and eagerly sending off letters. I didn't have much success. Was it because I  wrote mainly to boys and included my photograph?? I grew up in a house of boys.  It was girls that were an exotic species to me. Who knows?

Growing up we had a house phone, the calls were rarely for me. It wasn't the done thing to spend hours chatting on the phone though I do remember one boyfriend ringing me regularly. I asked him to ring about 8 in the evenings, dinner would be finished and the family kneeling down to say the rosary. That worked a couple of times before the parents copped on and calls were banned during at this hour. After I got married, we hadn't a phone for over 18 months. Getting a phone connected was a long, arduous, expensive business.

But life has changed dramatically. There has been a technology explosion. From not having any phone I now have two mobile phones as do several other family members. Then there are the computers, laptops and iPads! At one stage instead of the one car of my childhood there were five  family cars.

In addition to this, I moved on from being a rather solitary child to being blessed with a cornucopia of good friends.

So how have I moved from what we might call a simple life to being unable to imagine life without the internet?

My family grew up and moved away. I also have moved away. We are far flung, Five countries, three continents. The internet is our lifeline, our umbilical cord. We send instant messages that all the family can read together at the one time and carry on a conversation as if we were in the one room. We check in with each other all the time. It is our modern day tomtom drums.

When I began to learn Turkish I used the website LiveMocha. I made several good online friends there, many of whom I have since met and stayed in touch with though I no longer use the site.

I have reconnected with school friends that I hadn't seen for many years. I even discovered one has a place not too far from me here in Turkey and we plan to meet again in June.

I have been able to stay in touch with people that I have worked with on school projects and that I have met on my travels. Some people you meet you know you just connect. Often times life and busyness makes us neglectful of this connection. But whatever one may say about Facebook, it allows us to keep that connection alive. It may be just liking someone's post, a comment on a photograph or a timely birthday reminder or a brief chat on Messenger. It keeps those connections alive.

Recently here we had a power cut, nothing new in that. Previously power  cuts could last for hours. In recent times that has been reduced to 30 minutes or so. But on this day, time crept on, no power, no internet. Eventually my phone went down too. Rumours began to fly. It wasn't just our area, the whole of Turkey was out. A terror attack, bills not paid, an effort to promote nuclear power? Who knew? But then this led to the certainty that we had no idea when the power would return.

I cannot begin to tell you the feeling of being cut off. I had water, I had lots of candles, I have an open fire. I could survive without telly. I could pass the time easily, reading or knitting but what if my family needed to contact me? What if my mother became ill?  These were the thoughts that were tumbling around in my head. The whole of the country was out so what would I, could I do?

The lights came on at 9.30 that evening. The first thing I do was check my phones to see if anyone had tried to reach me. I put everything I had on charge and settled in to answer emails, Viber messages and browse the net to see what family and friends had been up to for the past 12 hours.

The internet is my lifeline to family and friends and as such I could not imagine living without it.

Friday Reflections.

It is hard to believe Friday has come around again so quickly. This is a week that began well. We had wonderful weather at the weekend. I was out and about with my camera, enjoying a couple of quiet days after the busyness of the previous week.

The gazanias were also enjoying the sunshine.

I have been sorting through old photographs, beginning to delete the unwanted ones in an effort to save on storage space. Our theme for our photography workshop this week was portraits. This was stretching me.  Portraits are not my thing. Until my trip to Nepal last year I was better known for asking people to get out of my way, they were ruining my shot. Living on my own now it was hard to find a willing subject. Even the cats run when they see the camera. I eventually presuaded a friend, to being my guinea pig or should I say model? He was very patient but he soon tired of posing for yet another shot form a different angle.

Here are a couple of the results:

I plied him with tea to keep his spirits up

I really struggled with this lighting. I got lots of noise. In post procuction while eliminating the noise, I also lost the character lines of  his face. Any ideas anyone?

My week was going well,  I was feeling so good I couldn't think of one bad thing that had happened to me during it. It just goes to prove one should never become complacent. Wednesday it all started to go wrong. I knocked over and broke my 3TB external hard drive. It contained all my photographs collected over the years. What's worse is, this was only a new one. The last one blew up only a couple of months ago during a power surge.  This one can be rescued again, I am told, but at a cost!

So then today I sat down to write this blog post. I read the three prompts we were given and thought "Oh, oh." This is not going to be an easy one for me. 

Prompt No. 1. What was the funniest thing I saw or heard this week.?  Hmmm. My sense of humour has taken a bit of bashing over the past few days. My remote control keyboard stopped working today.  Yesterday I dropped my phone as I was coming into the house. Luckily, the phone is ok but the case is broken. I thought to myself what next? 

Well guess what? This is the second attempt at writing this post. The first seems to have disappeared into the ether. It seems that the Blogger app on the iPad hasn't got an automatic save or maybe it is because I hadn't put a title on it. Hence my second time try.

Prompt no. 2. What book or books had the greatest influence on me.....skip that one, I love books but have any really had a major influence on my life?

 Prompt No.3.  A quotation by Maya Angelou. "There is no greater agony than holding an untold story inside you"  Well, that doesn't apply. I have always been a "sharer" even if my confidants were reluctant ones.

Decisions, decisions, this week is going downhill rapidly!

It looked like No. 2 was my best option. This is where I would love to lie and say that the book that has had the greatest influence on me is some great piece of literature like James Joyce's "Ulysess" or one of Mahatama Gandhi's many works. That might make me look good. Unfortunately that is not the case. 

I read for pleasure. Almost always fiction. I read across the spectrum from light chic lit to books that are critically acclaimed, lyrically written, books that get me so involved in the story that it is a couple of days before I can start a new one. It takes me time to separate from the characters.  Some.books I have really enjoyed, just for their pure escapism, books that took me away from my daily routine to a place where I did not have to think, where I could  just relax, laugh and enjoy

So what or which books have had the most influence on me? Wait for it!  I can almost see you wincing as I say it. Enid Blytons books are the ones.  Do I hear shocked intake of breath, the exclamations, "What? Is she out of her cotton picking mind?  Now we know why she is Cilgin Kiz, Crazy Girl!

Enid Blyton has not been critically well received. She has been accused of being a second rater, her books of being elitist, racist, repetitive and totally predictable. 

Then why? Why has this author's books been so influential in my life?

 When I was eight, I moved schools. I was in second class. I found myself struggling, both with making friends and keeping up with class work. Everyone else in the class seemed to be able to read fluently. I was stumbling through. My lack of fluency affected every subject. How could I do the math when I couldn't read the question?

Dad stepped into the breach and gave me lots of extra help at home and it wasn't too long before I began to read proficiently. At the time there wasn't the great array of children's books that is available now. I still love children's books. We even read one, "The Monster Calls" in my Irish book club a couple of years back and it was probably one of the only books we all agreed we liked. I was sad when my girls grew to big for me to indulge myself by buying them beautifully illustrated picture books. 

Anyway, I started to read. A whole new world began to open up for me. I was quite a solitary child. Even though one of six, I am an only girl and and there was a three and a four year age gap on either side of me. We lived out from the centre of the village and  we were still regarded as blow ins by the "locals".

I used to read my Mum's books that she had when she was a girl. The Girls Crystal.  They were big thick books, thick pages, by that time a dull shade of brown. But the short stories inside were good. Then I discovered Enid Blyton. While  the "Secret Seven" were not my favourites I thrived on the adventures of the "Famous Five" From the comfort and safety of my couch or my place sprawled in the sunshine on the sitting room floor, I enjoyed their amazing adventures and imagined myself with them, especially with Timmy the Dog. Then there was the Adventure series, the Five Find Outers and of course the school series, St Clare's and Mallory Towers. How I longed to go to boarding school, not for the marvellous schools of course. No! I never thought about what it would be like to be sent away from home at a young age. But oh those tuck boxes and midnight feasts, how I longed to to take part.

One night, when I was ten, I was reading one of my favourites, "The Hollow Tree House" I was enrapt and couldn't put the book down. My Mum came out to the toilet around  four in the morning and saw the crack of light around my door. I had snapped off the light as soon as I heard her door open but I was too late. She came into my room but I played dead. 

In retrospect I would have been better to leave the light on and pretend to be asleep. I could have pleaded I had fallen asleep much earlier and left the light on. She said nothing and left the room.  As soon as I heard the click of her door and I knew she was safely back in her room I turned on the light again and continued to read. To be honest I don't remember much of the story now, but I do remember the tears pouring down my face as I read. I know the children ran away to live in a hollow tree and one of them got very sick.  As for reading late, I thought I had gotten away with it until the next morning. However, I was let know in no uncertain terms I had been caught. My punishment? My bedside light was taken away for a week. So for the rest of that week I had to read standing up at the end of the bed, beside the wall light, ready to put it out. I obviously hadn't learned my lesson.

I progressed from Enid Blyton to the Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew mysteries. From there it was back to my Mums books, "Three Daughters of the United Kingdom" , "Honour without Reknown", then on to some of the classics, "The Swiss Family Robinson" being one of my favourites. By the age of thirteen, I was reading Walter Macken and Nicholas Monsarrat. I don't ever remember feeling lonely or bored. I always had books.

Move on a little and I was in teacher training college. One day we were discussing children's literature with our English lecturer. She was giving Enid Blyton "down the banks." Children  shouldn't be let near her books she said. The books were totally unrealistic. Children go off on an adventure, they are missing for weeks. There is no hullabaloo, no hue and cry. When they eventually arrive home, they are greeted by their mother who has prepared scones for their tea. They are never scolded or warned not to go missing again. There are so many things critically wrong with the books. But I totally disagree with children not being let read them!

I actually found my voice, something rare for me in those days. I spoke up and contradicted her. Yes I do agree with some of what she said but Enid Blyton must have done something right. She has sold over six hundred million books. Children have given their opinion by buying her books.

 I argued that it I felt it was our jobs as educators to get children reading, something, anything, that catches their interest.  I don't care if it comics or the back of the cornflakes packet. Every child is different, has different interests and tastes.  We need to cater to those tastes. How many of us, as adults finish a book we don't like or do we put it to one side?   How many teachers have given a child a book to read and told them they must finish it, they will not get another until they do?  But If we can get them reading, if we can enable them to catch the "reading bug" then it is our job as educators and/or as parents to introduce them to better quality books. If any author, any comics  non age appropriate or violent content excepted)  starts a child out on their reading journey, if they create and foster a lifelong love of reading, they hold value. 

Therefore it is Enid Blyton's books that have had the most influence one me, not for their intrinsic or literary value,  not for being thought provoking  or intellectually stimulating but because they turned a reluctant reader into a voracious one. They sparked my love of reading, a lifelong gift which I have endeavoured to pass on through my 35 year teaching career and to my four children. 

Gratitude

 My Friday Reflection

I haven't been blogging for a long time but this week felt the desire for the first time to get out and wield my pen. The problem was where to start. I had some old posts written but not uploaded as I hadn't added my photographs to them but after that where would I go. I decided to joined Friday Reflections the brain child of Janine Riper and Mackenzie Glanville. I am not always good at meeting deadlines but this seems like the ideal starting point to get me writing again.



This week I chose the prompt: 5 things I am grateful for this week.

1. Singalong .

 I belong to a Singalong group. We  are an international group who meet once a fortnight to sing, usually, but not always. harmoniously.

H3A Singalong Group.

It is very relaxed and no matter in what humour I arrive I invariably come out smiling. Singing is good for the soul. But not only do we sing, we laugh, swap stories, we share memories and bits of ourselves as we share our music. What fun it is to sing in our native languages and help others to get their tongue around our particular one, be it  English, Turkish, French, Dutch, Irish, Hungarian to name a few. You would think “having an ear” this should be easy but things aren’t always as you imagine. In addition to the singing, what warms me is the inclusivity of the group. Each one of us can bring a new song, take turns to choose which song we will sing next and of course to bring goodies which we enjoy during the tea break.

2. Spring.

Yesterday at Singalong, we sang ”The Rose  One of my favourite lines in this song is  near the end It says “Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows, lies the seed, that with the sun’s love, in the Spring becomes the rose”
I am just emerging into my Spring, all around me are signs of Spring. My plum tree is in bloom as is the almond tree across from my house. The sun shines more often than it rains now and I wake up to bright sunshine most mornings.

 More to the point, I am emerging from my own particular winter, what has been a  difficult period in my life, a time I filled with lots of or perhaps one could say frantic  activity to “keep me warm” during the cold days, This lately was followed by a period of  "hibernation" to rest up and recover.
I woke up this week to feel that surge of creativity which has been dormant, an awakening of what I thought might be lost.  So I have resurrected my blog, blown the dust off my camera, I am experimenting with new recipes and have settled  down to finish a large knitting project I  had undertaken instead of flitting from one project to another without finishing any.

This will eventually be a bedspread made up of just over 700  individual hexipuffs, knitted stuffed and then joined together.

3. My Camera.

This, more than anything else at the moment, is my creative outlet. I need one without planning a project or doing something with my hands I become stultified.
I have joined a photography workshop, it also meets once a fortnight. We all have different cameras ranging from serious DSLR’s to Point and Shoot to  the camera on our phones. We have been looking at the area of composition. I enjoy challenging myself. Sometimes it seems easy. For example, a recent topic was texture, pattern, shape and a frame within a frame. It should be easy to capture a shot but the challenge is how to make that image interesting, to capture the viewers attention. We have to submit "homework" This is wonderful because we are learning from each other, looking at each other's photos.

Our latest topic will be my biggest challenge. It is portraits, not my cup of tea at all. I am known for telling people to move out of my shots they are spoiling the view. One night this week I was talking to my daughter on Skype. Our cameras were open. I don’t usually like looking at a close up of myself, but I noticed the way the light from the reading lamp was falling on my face. It immediately got me thinking ….ooooh now there is a portrait, just not me, not a selfie!  I just have to find a willing victim to sit in the same position while I play with my camera, and the lighting.

Sorry daughter for being distracted!

4.Viber.

Like many Irish families, we are scattered. We live in five different countries, on three different continents. We were lucky this year to be all able to get together at Christmas. I am so grateful to Viber. We Skype each other but those conversations are more often than not one- to-one. What I miss most is our times around the dinner table when the conversation was often a free-for-all and you would find waht you said picked up before you could even put it down. Viber is the closest I can get to this, now we are apart. We have a group messaging system. So the conversation may begin in Edmonton Canada, gets an immediate reply from Germany followed by England, Ireland and Turkey. Not in any particular order. It can happen at any time of day once you are connected to the internet. I am immediately taken back to the family dinner table. Viber has made it  clear that my daughters suffer from a genetic disorder inherited from me. I was accused for years of having a “ smilie or sticker addiction,” It seems to have been passed on. One daughter says we have regressed to communicating in pictures, cave art. Well what can I say. If a  picture paints a thousand words……











 

 The downside with Viber is if you happen to sleep - we are in different time zones - or if you lose your wifi connection, you could  have over thirty messages to scroll back through to see what you have missed.
But then of course, you haven’t missed it. The conversation is there waiting for you…and you have time to come up with a suitable reply! So not a downside after all!


 5. The Cat Brush,
Last but not least, this week I am grateful for a new purchase, a cat brush.  I am not the only one grateful for this  Buster, the cat, after initial doubts, is  even more grateful than I.

Now, every morning, Buster gets a good brushing. Is it the fact that it is Spring?  Boy can this cat shed hair! As I was ironing the other morning, I made a mental note to myself, either bring the cat with me on my next trip to the hairdressers and get him dyed black or buy a new wardrobe of blonde clothes. Ginger cats and dark trousers are not a good match.

My mind immediately began to ponder the possibility of  developing a spray on, brush out hair dye for cats. You know they are not fond of water. Therefore a  wash in, rinse out will not work. If I could or someone else for that matter could develop the product I could dye Buster to match my outfit on any given day so the cat hair would not show. With this was tossing  around in my brain, I spotted the brush on the shelf in the supermarket. Not quite as good as a fur dye nonetheless I quickly snapped it up and brought it home to Buster.

I was not sure how he would react, so first I told him of my plan to dye him black and mentioned as I had not come up with a spray formula it would involve water and washing. I then produced the brush as the alternative.  What can I say, after first trying his disdainful stare, he saw I wasn't caving!  He decided to give in with good grace flopped down rolled over and purred.
Later, having invited his friend  Zorro into play, they both collapsed exhausted onto the bed! Hmmmm...... I am going to have to introduce Zorro to the brush or tell her she could end up blonde...for the summer months anyway.

An couple of hours of chasing each other around the house, followed by a bedtime story it is time for a nap and hopefully not shed to much!

Beruwela Lighthouse. A Photostory.

Most days after school  we went to the beach. In addition to the ladies selling sarongs there,was a group of young men who in addition to chatting offered us various trips to us in the locality, at a price of course.

It was thanks to them we found our way to both Lunuganga and Brief Gardens, though in the end we went with our school tuktuk drivers as they gave us a much better price.

They also suggested that we take the short boat trip to Beruwela Lighthouse on a nearby island. In their estimation the best time would be sunset.

So we arranged to meet them one evening after school.

It was a good if slightly scary trip. There were no life jackets, and it soon became apparent why the lighthouse was necessary.

Barberyn Island complete with lighthouse. Are we heading straight for those rocks.

There were no life jackets and it soon became apparent why the lighthouse was necessary.

The view from the top of the lighthouse was wonderful as was the sunset.

Our tour guides.

The lighthouse was built by the British in 1928 but there may have been an older structure prior to this. It is still fully functional. It was getting a face lift when we arrived.

The road to the lighthouse

It is getting an overhaul.

It is one of four international lighthouses still working in Sri Lanka.  

The lamp .

What is that in the distance?

It is the statue of Buddha, at Kande Viharaya, the higgest statue of Buddha in Sri Lanka

Looking towards  the centuries old Ketchimalai Mosque, the white building in the near distance. 

75% of Barberyn Island is covered by coconut trees.

Coming to rest in the trees for the evening?

Home to five lighthouse keepers.

The sun begins to set

Ship heads into the path of the setting sun.

At the top.

The light is on, photo was impossible to take as the boat was going up and down!

Back at the hotel

Once again the beacon is lighting.