The title really threw me as I became aware of the award at 5.30 am......nattily attired in an ancient tee shirt and an equally decrepit dressing gown.
In the style stakes, bag lady was beating Caroline Charles by a distance.....
I have a great deal for which to thank Ayak...not only does she write a great blog, ranging far and wide from her home in Turkey, but she has given me the confidence to take on the computer and, if I can't beat it into submission...three falls or a knockout to decide the contest....at least I now know that if I turn it off and on again there is a fair chance that it will see things my way.
It certainly beats my previous strategy of boiling my head and throwing heavy objects.
You'll see when you go to her blog that she encourages her readers to blog themselves...and she sets a fine example!
Thank you, Ayak!
I am...reading the small print....to reveal seven things about myself and to pass on the award to other bloggers.
So......to work.
Revelations conjures up notions of the exploits recorded by the hardy journalists of 'The News of the World' of my young day who were always most disappointingly making their excuses and leaving just as things hotted up...
Or Revelations as in the Biblical sense....which could outdo 'The News of the World' any day without any excuses being made whatsoever.
I can just imagine the NotW's journalists faced with the Whore of Babylon.... they'd get as far as the clothing, the jewels and the golden cup and then they would have made their excuses and left before getting to the abominations and filthiness of her fornication.
It is a great tribute to the insatiable curiosity of the British public that 'The News of the World' survived....its readers always hoping that ...just for once...its journalists would run out of excuses.
Mark you, the British public keeps on voting for political parties too....on the same grounds.
So, seven revelations....
Cricket.
A wonderful game made even better by the Test Match Special radio commentary on the BBC. I'd love to be able to watch it too....if Alastair Cook had been around when I was a young woman I think I'd have been a groupie.
Except that when I was a young woman the possibility of being a groupie was not something that had crossed my horizon and by the time it had the group would have had to have been visually impaired.
Gardening.
The gamble of planting a seed....the care of the young plant....and all to feed the blasted leaf cutter ants as soon as I plant it out. It really must be the triumph of hope over experience....
Dogs.
Can't resist a dog...don't even try.
Books.
Can't resist a book either...unless it's Harry Potter, that meretricious, illiterate offering to the ignorance of our times.
Food.
The habit of preserving food dies hard....I'm sure that I'll be like my old neighbour, Gaston, who preserves the fruit from his trees every year despite being a widower with no children on the grounds that it is a sin to let it go to waste....by the time I left France the Kilner jars had broken free from the pantry and had taken over two of the downstairs rooms of his house.
Travel.
I'll do it while I can....whether it's the bus to Nicaragua or the 'plane to Sri Lanka....I'm not turning down opportunities.
Friends.
Thank goodness for modern communications...letters are fine, but there is something about hearing someone's voice which is special and the existence of Skype has made moving to the other side of the world far less traumatic than it would have been previously.
Written descriptions are fine, but nothing beats sharing a cackle over the 'phone.
Passing on the award is more of a problem as there are so many blogs I enjoy.
However, when it comes to stylish some blogs come automatically to mind, thus
Dash's French Sampler, which never fails to enchant and delight
and
David Mcgrievey's an illustrated life
which is equally infallible but in no other way resembles the pope.
If you don't already know them then I hope you will enjoy discovering what they have to offer.
And a very worthy winner too if I may say.
ReplyDeleteSteve, that's very kind of you....the 'stylish' bit has me worried, though...
ReplyDeleteI don't know about stylish, but yours is definitely one of the best reads around, so well done on your award!
ReplyDeleteSarah, thank you...and you're not so dusty yourself!
ReplyDeleteUm...reason no. 8 on your last post silenced Mr. Fly very effectively...many thanks!
Fly well done on your award and I feel very honoured and humbled that you have passed it onto me.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment I am very stylishly dressed in a dressing gown of indeterminate age, when I finish my cup of tea, I am going to don my wellies and take Crusoe, round the garden on a lead. Poor Crusoe is now under house arrest and a prisoner to the lead, he is not at all happy about this but with three of the local shepherds bitches on heat, it is the only way, we will all be relived when it passes!
XXX
Dash, but I bet you wear your dressing gown and wellies with panache!
ReplyDeletePoor Crusoe...deprived of his menage a trois!
I expect he sulks and casts you dark looks from his bed to try to induce guilt.
Hello ‘Fly’. Hear hear…I am also one of Ayak’s many fans. Ayak has demonstrated fine judgement too in presenting you with this worthy award. Enjoyed your very amusing post here - “Boiling your head” – “NotW’s journo’s and the Whore of Babylon”(How true) – and “Alastair Cook’s groupie”. Laughed out loud. Very funny.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to visit my blog and for leaving a comment. I hope you can pop back from time to time. I registered on your own fascinating blog here last night and have every intention of mulling through your numerous posts in the very near future. With a large mug of your excellent Costa Rican coffee too! Although I bet you only drink tea.
In response to your comments about my ‘Cortona’ post: – and what a prolific travel writer H.V. Morton was too. Hope you manage to turn up your books of his. I keep intending to grab some of his books, especially about his journeys through the middle east. As for Cortona, we were very fortunate to find ourselves there at all, as we were on a lightening three day visit of the Uffizi quarter in Florence and a beautiful little hilltop town in Tuscany called ‘San Giovanni d’Asso’. An American couple we met in our hotel suggested we go there, and this was just some of the magic we enjoyed.
I was quite over awed by my all too brief experience of Tuscany. The very next day, we headed off to Pisa to catch a plane to Barcelona, where we were booked to stay for the main part of our ten day trip. As we sat quietly in the airport waiting for our departure to Catalonia, I remember shaking my head and saying to my wife “Why on earth are we leaving this beautiful place to fly to Spain?” That said, we still had a wonderful time in Barca’s buzz.
One day I will return. I intend to do a post later concerning some WW2 tales surrounding the Uffizi district and the Ponte Vecchio. Talking of journalists - I’m in the middle of doing some research about my great uncle, who rose out of east London poverty at the turn of the last century, to become the Reuters’ Bureaux Chief in Rome between 1938 & 1940, when he had to exit Italy in a hurry by diplomatic boat upon Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler. After which he met de Gaulle, took over in Lisbon for Reuters again, joined the S.O.E, disappeared overseas for a couple of years on various special missions and ended up working with Ian Fleming and MI6 in the fifties. People like my great uncle Cornelius and Mr H.V.Morton put characters like Indiana Jones to shame. They and their peer alike, were the ‘real deal’. I envy and salute them all.
P.s – What’s the weather like over there? Will I need some wellies or a sun block?
P.P.s – Thanks for sharing the links to ‘Dash’ & ‘David’ too.
Back again shortly. Have a good afternoon. Phil.
Phil, where do I start!
ReplyDeleteI met your blog through Ayak and the mad recipe translation, started to read and became hooked!
Bollocked accordingly for not getting the coffee brewed on time for the morning break...tea and coffee alternate here according to who is around.
As to H.V. Morton, his books on Italy were wonderful...I've found 'The Traveller in Southern Italy' but not the others...my books are scattered between here and France...
I also found Gissing's 'The Ionian Shore' while I was looking, which you might care for.
How right you were to take up a suggestion..some of our best 'finds' have arisen from these.
And whatever you do, do the research into your great uncle's life...as you say, chaps like him were the 'real deal'..nothing sanitised or fabricated about them...
Well, if you're coming to Costa Rica, then come December to end of April if you don't like rain.
The rest of the year it rains regularly in the afternoons, which doesn't bother me as I go out in the morning, do the necessary and get back before it starts.
Oh, and whatever you do, do not stay in the upmarket hotels..you'll only meet Americans.
I firmly believe that sunblock gives rise to skin cancer.
I have fair skin, have never used it...I may go as red as a lobster, but I have never had skin cancer problems unlike a number of my friends who use sunblock and who have.
I tried it, briefly, when we were touring Nicaragua and Honduras and felt uncomfortable.
A bit of aloe extract does just as well.
But then I'm not an expert..or making money from skin stuff.
Wellies are always advisable for trotting about in the countryside, dry or wet season...there are some snakes which take exception to being disturbed.
Hope you enjoy Dash and David...I love their blogs.
Pleased to have met you, Phil!
' Harry Potter, that meretricious, illiterate offering to the ignorance of our times'
ReplyDeleteOh yes, so well said - so stylish in fact
Mark...I'd removed the dressing gown by then...
ReplyDeleteWell done, Fly, and thoroughly deserved.
ReplyDeleteSo you're not a Harry Potter fan, then? :D
Bloody Blogga! Blugga them then!! That's what I say..."The Blugga's!!!"
ReplyDeletenodamnblog, it was very kind of Ayak.
ReplyDeleteNo, I think you can safely say I'm not a fan....
Phil...my sentiments exactly, but I can't work out Wordpress....