I have put it up on the shelf in my bedroom. You can see it here, but it's much prettier than it looks here with a lacy brocade material for the "sock" and a ruched satin trim.
Thank you Amel! It was such a lovely surprise. :-)
This store was so pretty I had to take a photo. All the crockery on the left was poppies, in the middle were flowers and farm animals and on the right (off the photo) were mugs wih dogs and cheaper ledt-over mugs. We bought some of the cheaper coffee mugs. They have fruit on them - pears, strawberries and plums.
A Dutch store selling tiny pancakes with toppings of cream, caramel, choclate and other tasty things. They were delicious. I could eat a mountain of them.
At the Inverness market we had German Wurst sausages on rolls for lunch and then later we had a French dish of potatoes, cheese, onion and bacon. Very creamy and tasted amazingly good. At both markets they were selling everything from sweets, dried fruit and biscuits to sausages, pickles and cheeses.
At the Elgin market we bought French cheeses, fresh baked (portable oven) French bread and biscuits, sausages from... somewhere, Polish apple and pear cider, Greek olives stuffed with chili and garlic and Turkish delight. I also got some embroidered towels for Christmas gifts.
Then we went home and ate a bit of everything...
*burp*
It was freezing cold in Elgin, but we stayed anyway because there was a band playing great music and everyone was having fun. My feet were frozen and my hands hurt from the cold, but I still had a good time. The band had a fiddler who played some lovely pieces and then their drummer did a solo, which my mom enjoyed as she loves drums. We left only because we still had to get some groceries before heading home, but I must admit that next time I'll dress warmer!
The rules are:Three Things I Believe Are Necessary For Good Powerful Writing:
1. The desire
to write
2. Discipline
3. Knowledge of random things
Photo by Clara NatoliLast week an old school friend managed to hunt me down on the internet. (Hi Sheri!) We haven’t seen each other in a long time, but writing to her felt just like it used to when we wrote notes to each other in High School. Okay... I “wrote” notes, she typed them. Most of our written conversations happened when she was in typing class and supposed to working! ;-)Hello everyone!
I doubt that many will remember me, I certainly tried my best NOT to be remembered back in those days! At the end of my 5 years at High School I doubt if even a dozen people really knew anything about me, but it never bothered me, I knew me and that was all that ever mattered. I was never sent to detention, not because I was good but because I was never caught out. I never saw the point in deliberate rebellion.
I have no regrets. I never liked school much, but then why should anyone? It’s a most unnatural state. I would be very depressed if I were sitting here now writing to say that those were the best years of my life. And to all of you, please PLEASE, if any of you really do feel that High school was the best years of your life… GO OUT AND CHANGE YOUR LIFE! School was a foundation, not a vocation. Remember the happy times, forget the lousy ones, and move on. How sad it must be if the only triumphs we were ever to have were from our school days. I do hope that most of you have grown more than that. I know I have.
When I sat at the final assembly I remember looking around at everyone and feeling a deep sadness that this time in my life was over, but I felt no urge to try and prolong it nevertheless. Life is all about change and it’s subsequent loss and that is something that is better embraced than denied. I have no desire to know what has become of those I knew back then. They are my past, not my present and most definitely not my future. I walked out of School with no dreams or wishes, strange as that may sound. I always wanted life to be an adventure, a surprise, and as such I had no fixed paths for my future. And the past 20 years have been all I could have hoped - terrible, wonderful, boring and bizarre but never EVER predictable. I have done things that the schoolgirl me never imagined, experienced joys she had no notion of and suffered calamities way beyond her basic fears. They have made me who I am today. I like who I am today, I like what I have become and what I stand for. Who can ask for more than that?
What of the past 20 years? If I were to write at length on what I’ve done I’m sure it would bore you all, I know it would bore me! Who really cares anyway? At school I was most likely remembered for what I did rather than what I thought. That makes it seem appropriate now to end by being remembered for what I think rather than what I’ve done.
So to all of my year classmates - God bless, good luck and go well. I hope you all are living lives you enjoy, even if they’re not the ones you were dreaming of back then in High School.
For you... gramps. :-)
...
Hello!
So I'm going to write from my own mongrel viewpoint. My British-Colonial mixed-up cultural muddled-religious self. I hope it will entertain more than it offends, but mostly I hope it helps to add another layer to prema's wonderful stories of her own culture and childhood memories.
Since Prema asked me to join here and write I thought maybe my first piece should be an introduction to who I am. The simplest would be to say "I am a mongrel". For a long time that worried me, but in recent years I've realised there's a lot of joy in being a mongrel.
I was born in Africa in a British colony. At first I thought I was British. Well... for three years I WAS British, but then Southern Rhodesia declared it's own independence and I became a member of a rebellious non-acceptable country instead. Then Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and they took away my nationality. Now I belong nowhere. I thought I was British, but then I did my family tree and found that I had as many ancestors walking Europe and the Middle East as I had in the British Isles. I thought I was Christian, but when I went to school my religious teacher told me my beliefs weren't "right" and researching our family tree led me to distant Muslim cousins in Turkey, one Buddhist, some Jewish family in America and way too many Christian variations to list.
I have thought a lot of things only to find out they were illusions. The truth is I am a mongrel. I have no country I can hold as my ancestral home, not even a single continent I can claim as "mine". I have no single religion that runs through my family history alone. When I look in the mirror I see my grandmother's Irish face, my grandfather's Scottish nose, my father's English hair.. and in all this European-ness I have Persian eyes from some long lost ancestor.
There's a saying in Southern Africa - to be a "dog of the wind". Something homeless and restless, a person who has no roots. I am a dog of the wind and it can feel lonely. For a while it made me feel rather lost, but then I remember the blessings it brings me. If I belong to nothing I can also belong to everything. If I stand with my ancestry on different continents I can be a bridge between different cultures. I can enter many places of religion and find God... at times like that it feels good to be a mongrel. :-)
