Things I like...

... for Knots in the String.

I’m writing this as I sit in the sun, trying to warm up after a swim. The water has chilled and today there was an unfriendly breeze. I tried to save a bee from drowning, after finding him floating in the sea and managed to coax him onto a piece of seaweed and then carried to a log and shrubs up on the shore. I then went back into the water again whihc was a mistake as I felt chilled to the bone and no amount of hot cups of tea and a mini-Easter egg is making a skerrick of difference.

I shall sssssstruggle on, in between a little shiver…

As I drove back to the coast after the usual rush and tumble of Mondays and Tuesdays in the city, I decided to compile a list of the Things I Like This Week. If nothing else, it’s a kind of gratitude list and serves to remind one that life isn’t that bad after all.

1. Friends – how lovely it is to compile a list of Postcard People. Nice to think of cards winging their way across the globe, filled with good intentions. Just the way all the world should be. (Alice, I have no email address to send you the Postcard List - can you contact me, please? Thank you.)

2. Home friends – spending an afternoon sitting in my friend Willie’s coastal sunroom, surrounded by her glorious charcoal and pastel sketches, and discussing the merits of various beetroot chutneys and how to pickle olives, while drinking glasses of Pellegrino and the chocolate labs (Vita and Baci) play with Il Puppiro. Outside, the sun tried to shine on this particular day, but the westerly wind growled through the trees and the green bean vines and orange and red striated nasturtiums on the veggie garden fence squirmed and undulated.

3. New distance specs with clip-on sunnies! O M Gosh! Gamechangers! Very 1930’s/40’s in style. The nice thing is that the clip-on’s also fit my older loved distance glasses. Waste not want not.

4. Ballet friends and ballet class. Brain work as well as body work. Especially the adage and the work in the centre. Hated the frappés, always do, but with a bone bruise under the ball of the foot, more uncomfortable than normal, despite padding in the ballet shoe.

5. The American protests. Sometimes people have to stand up and be counted no matter how hard it is.

6. Pupps. He’s a little trier, I’ll give him that. He mostly does what we ask and he’s sooo good when he sees something that disturbs him – cars, other dogs, whatever. He just sits and studies the moment. I remember when I first saw him as a wee pup with a squad of bumbling siblings all around, he sat on my lap on the edge of the doggy crowd just assessing, so that I saw him as something of a philosopher. I still think that. He has a way of looking at us, at them, at the world, with the most nut-brown eyes, as if his mind is trundling along sorting things into categories. Right now he’s trying to understand how nightwalks have become so dark and full of shadow. (We changed from daylight-saving last Saturday night). He also seems to attract fans wherever we go. Everyone stops, asks if they can pat him, take his picture, two ladies even scooped him up and cuddled him. He’s a sociable little soul and we don’t mind at all, although he needs to learn to sit politely whilst being adored. We wonder if he should have his own TikTok account! (Absolutely only joking!)

7. Cake. I’ve been on a cupcake bender. Coffee cupcakes and then Jaffa cupcakes. Towards the end of their cakey lives, I make a rich chocolate sauce (not made with cream) and we have them as a dessert. Sinful in the extreme.

8. Books. Juliet Marillier’s The Amber Owl. She has such an effortless bardlike quality to her writing. Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books – a whimsical book that I enjoyed. Satoshi Yagisawa More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop – such a poignant and gentle book. And on audio in the car, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol – exciting, and as steeped in convoluted symbology as only a Dan Brown can be.

And on that count, yesterday, I drove about 20 minutes south to my most favourite deserted beach and Pupsicle and I were just wandering along the tideline where I found a petite fragment of perfectly blue china and 2 pieces of beer glass, all rubbed smooth by the sea.

But…

…as I drove to the beach, I was deep in the most dramatic part of The Lost Symbol. The novel is about freemasonry and is set in Washington. Looming large is the symbol on the US dollar bill and the Great Seal of the USA - a pyramid. Also seen as a triangle: ‘…a symbol (with) many meanings. It is in the main used in the Mark Masons and Ark degrees where it alludes to, among other things the Master’s Mark of Approval, or the Holy Trinity…’ (Quora). Dan Brown’s symbology is dark and thrilling and so can you imagine, as I beachcombed, what I felt when I saw this lying at my feet in the tideline? On a deserted beach in the southeast of Tassie? Brrrrrr…

9. Rogue Heroes and Darby and Joan on TV. I’m addicted to Darby and Joan and hope there’ll be a 3^rd series. There has to be a 4^th series of Rogue Heroes because we’ve just got to D-Day.

10. Pupps’

new exercise regime for Mum. Running the lines on playing fields. He has an absolute fetish about lines. Quite bizarre…

Things I Don’t Like This Week:

1. Tariffs. But then it just becomes inordinately easy not to buy anything at all that comes from the USA. I do hope my American friends understand that this isn’t personal. It’s aimed deliberately at the current Fascist American Administration.

2. The Australian dollar dropping to its lowest value since Covid. I foresee a global recession.

   

3. The lack of mental coherence from the Trump Administration. See the issuing of tariffs against Heard and Macdonald Islands, inhabited only by penguins. It’s hilarious! But dark at the same time - disturbing at the lack of mental acuity in Washington. And these people have fingers on the button? Wow! And then there’s the issuing of tariffs against Norfolk Island, an Australian proctectorate of 2000 people who export nothing at all to the USA.

4. My right foot. But that’s a whole other story.

5. Difficulties buying grapes and blueberries in the shops. I suspect its end of season.

6. April is flying! That’s the thing with Time when one ages…

7. Dentist’s. I have a lovely dentist but I get the jim-jams in the chair.

   

8. Fang’s teeth. Please, let them start falling out! He understands ‘leave it’ and ‘gentle’ but every now and then, a glint appears in his eye and he changes from philosopher to vampire. Thankfully, he just found the toilet roll in the above pic. Better than my hand…

9. Running the lines on playing fields. Twice in one night! Exhausting!

Music for this week: This:

because it’s smooth. My husband knew the late Don Burrows well, filming a wonderful trout-fishing documentary with him for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Burrows’ music featured prominently. A lovely man.