Bright Moon

The moon is having a comeback these past few days - or should that be nights.  I've always loved looking at the new moon when it rises silently over the rim of the horizon and climbs up the night sky to join the stars.  It makes me feel very small and a bit scared, really. This huge disk, sitting up there in the dark vault of sky, doesn't make a sound.  It jumps out at you unexpectedly if you don't know that there's a full moon.

 I remember an aunt of mine, God rest her, used to take off her glasses while walking around London for fear the new moon would surprise her because she believed if you saw it first through glass it was bad luck. As for me, I used to have other issues with a full moon.  I remember crawling into work one morning after a more or less sleepless night.  As I got into the lift with a colleague I couldn't suppress a big yawn.  'New moon been keeping you awake, too?' my colleague asked sympathetically.  Up until then I had no idea that many people cannot sleep in the nights before the moon is full.  That particular time I didn't even know there was a full moon!  Then I began to monitor the nights when I couldn't sleep and yes, they all occurred at full moon. Nowadays the moon does not seem to affect my sleeping pattern and despite the super moon we are currently experiencing, I slept a full six hours last night which is very good going for me.  No, I don't have an explanation for this. 

Of course the experts pour scorn on the idea and tell us that the full moon has nothing to do with our sleeping badly or not.  When I lived in Germany someone supposedly in the know about these things said that around one million people couldn't sleep when there was a full moon but that the moon had nothing to do with their insomnia.  One million people eh?  If that were the measles it would be considered an epidemic! 

The moon also has an effect on the tides.  Living by the sea I am aware of this.  Water depth in the harbour is usually around 4.0 m at high tide when there is a full moon and between 3.6 to 3.8m at other times. So I think that this slightly eerie orb which we see at night does have an effect on us, or at least on some of us.  I suppose it is a question of how attuned we are to nature in general. 

Working while you sleep

I guess a lot of us read about that remarkable woman who does the housework while she's asleep.  Sleep working instead of sleep walking.  Interesting.  If she could figure out why and how she started doing this, she'd be on every talk show in the entire universe.  She could set up her own business and give seminars and lectures on "how to clean without knowing it" although I expect she'd come up with a snappier title than that.  And she could get in a cleaner to do the rough work although that might defeat the object.

But what about the millions of women who go out to work every day and come home to a routine of cooking, cleaning, ironing?  Not to mention helping with homework and sorting various little problems their children might have.  Oh and finding time to organise visits to grandmothers and buying presents for birthdays and newborns and having the neighbours in for a drink. These ladies only get a passing mention. Everyone knows they are there and the hard work they do but it's not something people want to see on talk shows.  'So how do you manage to get to the dry cleaners before they close, Mrs. Smith?'  'What's your quickest time for making supper and galloping off to a PTA meeting at your son's school, Mrs. Brown?'  I can't imagine a talk show host leaning closer to catch every word that Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown has to say on the subject.  And I bet the Mrs. Smiths and Browns of this world have plenty to say.

Now if a man were to do all that in addition to holding down a demanding job, he'd be cried up as the 'caring dad' always there for his children.  I'm not saying that modern fathers don't help with the children and the housework.  What I am saying that it is in most cases the woman who runs the household. And she gets very little credit for doing it.  Now if she got her elbows out, rolled up her sleeves and climbed the scary heights of the corporate ladder she'd get all the attention in the world.  Deservedly so.  It's good to see women in top jobs.  But who cheers for the 'ordinary' working mother as she juggles her workload with more skill than some top (male) executives can demonstrate?

Sunny Haze

I didn't get around to writing a post last week because, to be honest, I was too malafoostered by the warm sunny weather we are having!   We've had well over a week of blue skies and temperatures warm enough to melt an ice cream - well, okay not exactly the tropics but it is possible to walk around in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops (unless you're Victoria Beckham when you'd be in something more stunningly elegant). It is just too amazing.  Yes, that yellow disc up there in the cloudless sky really is the sun and not some strange visitation from outer space.  And doesn't it make everything look different?  People are different.  They've dug deep in their wardrobes to find summery clothes and go about with smiles on their faces.  We all know of course that this is not going to last.  Already the weather forecaster is murmuring something about rain coming in from the west.  But that's not until the start of the coming week.  So we'll do as the farmers are doing and make hay/silage while the sun shines.  I am in the country house and dog-sitting at the moment.  Everything looks wonderful, even the grass seems to sparkle under the sun's rays. The birds are whizzing around singing at the tops of their little voices and leaving their calling cards all over the car and the windows, bless them!  Tea in the garden is an everyday thing at the moment.  Who needs the Med.?

Knitted Bikinis

I've always liked clothes without ever really keeping to the latest trends, except of course when I was in my teens and early twenties when I decked out in flared trousers and tie-dyed t-shirts. If my memory serves me right, there wasn't much to chose from in those far off days, either you morphed into a Jackie Kennedy lookalike complete with pillbox hat or you were a Woodstock type or you wore The Mini Skirt.  I know I liked the hippie look because it gave me a sense of freedom which I guess we were all looking for in the late 60's and early 70's.
When I got married I had to budget and all that fashion just passed me by for a good few years.  I looked at price tags and not at designer labels.  Most of the time I prowled the shops for children's clothes which were a) indestructible and b) affordable.  If I'd heard of Jimmy Choo I would probably have thought it was some kind of inflatable rubber duck for children's bathtime.
Nowadays I indulge in reading fashion magazines because I just love the language of fashion.  This week I spotted a knitted bikini advertised in one of the Sunday newspaper supplements.  The model was sitting on a stool wearing a pearl necklace and earrings and white sandals.  The bikini itself (with a price tag of £425) was black trimmed with white.  One item on the floor beside the model caught my attention :  a blush clutch.  A blush clutch conjures up all sorts of sophisticated things like the red carpet at Cannes, where it is just the thing to have with you should you fall out of your dress or do an Eva Longoria and lift your skirt too high.  You can also choose from an apple or pear clutch or a metallic one. Sounds incredibly romantic.  Either way I'm pretty sure that a knitted bikini isn't going to get further than a sun lounger, clutch or not. 
Of course fashion as we know it is not for me. After two children and more chocolate intake than the confectionery section of Harrods, I can only admire from a respectful distance.  I still love clothes.  I see them as good friends who'll cover up for me.  And I don't feel the need or the capability of wearing the latest trends.  That's one of the comforts of not being the youngest at the ball.

A Spirit of Adventure

Just when I was beginning to think that the age of adventure as in King Solomon's Mines or Raiders of the lost Ark, was more or less over, I read something exciting in The Sunday Times edition of 12th May, namely that archaeologists have discovered a lost world in Honduras. The civilisation - spotted from an airplane - looks like "a vast tended garden" and is located inland from the Mosquito Coast.  Even the name Mosquito Coast with its reputation for swamps, cliffs, poisonous plants and leaping vipers conjures up heroes in khaki shorts battling through thick jungle with machetes.  Just think how toe-curlingly exciting it would be to go on a mission (in the company of one of these taciturn, sun bronzed types) to discover a place which has been left to itself presumably since Theodore Morde, an American adventurer and spy, emerged from the jungle in 1940 claiming to have found "a lost city of the monkey god" with giant primate sculptures. He claimed that human sacrifices were made to these gods but before he could be questioned about the location of the place he was killed by a a car in London.  Never was a car accident more ill timed, or was this some kind of curse of the monkey god?   Doesn't the very idea make your flesh creep and your heart pound a little faster?  Even Hollywood couldn't have done it better.  It will be fascinating to see what archaeologists find when they eventually reach this place - provided they survive the combined dangers of the Mosquito Coast.

Another intriguing tidbit also attracted my attention this week. Mmme. de Florian decided to leave her apartment near the red light district of Pigalle in Paris when World War II broke out.  She took off for the South of France and never returned.  When she died at age 91 her heirs set about doing an inventory of her property and their agents stumbled upon this apartment. No one had been inside it since she had left it 70 years previously.  Pictures of the place can be seen on many websites and are worth a look - here is one link http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/ which you will find fascinating.  Even more intriguing is the discovery in the apartment of a painting of a lady in a pink dress.  A bundle of love letters also discovered indicate that the painting, although not signed, is by Giovanni Boldini as are the letters.  Boldini was one of Paris' most important painters of the Belle Epoque.  And it gets even better.  The lady in the pink dress in the portrait is none other than Marthe de Florian, grandmother of Madame de Florian.  She was an actress and a socialite and apparently Boldini's mistress. Doesn't it make you long to know more?  What made Madame de Florian decide not to return to Paris at the end of the war?  How did she live during that time?   What was the story of her grandmother?   More questions than answers but the stuff of which epic novels is made.

It's nice to know that mysteries are still out there waiting to be discovered.

Everything stops for tea

Irish Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin has said that he has resolved many an important economic issue with his colleague Finance Minister Michael Noonan over a cup of tea according to an article in http://www.TheJournal.ie today.   Henry Fielding wrote "love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea".  He had a point.

A cup of tea was the "cure all" when I was growing up in Ireland.  If you had a headache, a cup of tea would fix it, if your stomach was upset, a cup of tea was recommended.  I can't remember if any of these remedies actually worked.  I suspect that the comfort of having a cup of this hot aromatic liquid improved my spirits rather than dispelling any discomfort I might have been feeling.

The Irish and the British are notorious for their addiction to tea.  Our continental neighbours do not share this passion.  In Germany, for example, where I lived for many years, tea is taken black and weak, and no self-respecting German would have a mug of tea at his or her elbow all day long.  Coffee is the preferred drink, especially in the office, but only until around four o'clock in the afternoon because if taken after that time it will keep you awake, they tell you. The Italians like to drink espresso on their way to work and they may or may not have a sticky bun or croissant to go with it.  I was in St.Mark's Square in Venice once on a weekday and was amazed at all the people in business attire who lined the counters sipping coffee and reading the daily newspaper before heading off to their place of work.  But maybe you need a good strong espresso of a morning if you have to get around by boat.

Meeting someone for a coffee is pretty much international, though. This could be because tea-making has something of a ritual about it and if you order tea in a restaurant you may not get exactly what you want.  Coffee on the other hand does not require more than a percolator or a dash of hot water on powder if you're not fussy.  Yes, there are many varieties these days - cafe creme, latte, cappuccino, espresso to name but a few but they are all something special mostly to be enjoyed in a coffee bar.  There are no tea bars interestingly enough, but in good quality hotels you have a choice of several different kinds of tea, admittedly in teabags.

There are people who still use loose tea because it gives a better flavour.  But even in our hurried world of instant gratification where we use the less messy teabags, there are differences between brands of tea and tea drinkers stick to their preferred brand.  A few gourmets only take the Darjeeling or Earl Grey variety. Most of us tea-drinkers though like our tea either "weak", "not too strong", or "strong" and we are not always sure where it comes from. 

Tea  appears to have first been used in China in about the 3rd century and later in Japan.  Interestingly although we think tea drinking an original British and Irish habit, tea was not introduced to Britain until the 1650's when Catherine of Braganza (who was Portuguese) married Charles II and, missing  the Portuguese tea-drinking culture, started the custom.  At that time tea was distributed through the coffee houses which were popular then.   Another surprise is that tea-growing in India was a British initiative to break the Chinese monopoly.

So when we put the kettle on, we are part of a long chain of culture.  We are also continuing a very valuable ritual.  There's nothing quite as relaxing as sitting down to share a cup of tea. Cheers!

Herding Cats or You Had Me At Hello

The English language is very flexible.  You can twist it and bend it as much as you like as long as people understand you and as long as you don't mind the purists among us complaining that you're ruining the language.

Having said that, it is not so surprising to learn that phrases commonly used in day-to-day office business can be very irritating.  A recent survey found that, for example, management's over-use of expressions such as "going forward", "let's touch base on this", "thinking outside the box", "flag up" and "it's on my radar" were apt to make them see red (yes this post is a bit tongue in cheek and I put that phrase in deliberately to make you smile :)).  One of my favourite hates was "let's make it happen" but I think this has been dropped from high-powered meetings since nobody actually made anything "happen"  simply because you can't.

When I worked in London many cell phone years ago, my manager at the time was piqued by the expression "to liaise".  He maintained (at length!) that liaison was a noun begged, borrowed or stolen from the French and you couldn't make a verb out of it.  This very same manager used to get up my nose (yes, another bit of tongue in cheek :)) by saying "I'll appraise him/her of that."  As we all know you appraise a situation but you apprise someone of it.  That was drummed into me by the good nuns at school.

It's amazing how expressions come and go.  Whatever happened to manifold or diverse or even myriad? Now everything is eclectic, which gets a bit boring after a while.  And you have an "epiphany" which sounds a bit scary to me. I'd rather do some soul-searching and find myself.  My favourite though, simply because it is so evocative, is "herding cats"  This immediately conjures up the impossibility of trying to keep a group of independent and freedom-loving felines together in a group. One of the good guys among the cliches.

I think I'll finish with a quote from Jane Austen, a lady who wrote so elegantly and had a right to feel as Marianne does in Sense and Sensibility when she says  :  "I abhor every common catch-phrase by which wit is intended." Sir John, to whom she addressed her remarks, "did not much understand this reproof but laughed as heartily as if he did."
 I think we can deduce from this that we are all going to have to think outside the box as we go forward.