Weak Tuesday

No power to do much today. Getting some food from the kitchen to have before the medics is quite an effort. I was lucky to make the second appearance just after midday as I caught a rare moment when the sun was peering in through the kitchen windows. An unusual lunch was just served alfresco downstairs:

;-) No, that wouldn't happen in an English household, but I have heard that in Peru they even have a special festival where they only eat this kind of meat! How lucky you are, ginger, to live here, not there! I guess, your life wouldn't be much of fun in a Mediterranean country. All these skeleton-like poor cats in Turkey or Oman, a constant struggle. One evening on Heybeliada, one of The Princes Islands we came across a scene that would make a hit on YouTube if we'd been quick enough to get it. It was outside a fishmonger, just before closing, and all these really starved, skinny cats, maybe nearly twenty of them, were all sitting there, most alert, their eyes focused on the activity outside the shop in hope of receiving some tasty unsold scraps of the seafood assortment! You could sense this tension in the air; and the according smell of the place, of course. We stopped instantly. My mobile phone camera wouldn't do justice in the dark; besides, the card was probably full by then and my friend was hurriedly getting the equipment ready when... a vehicle arrived from the darkness and scared away the whole feline gang!

However, for the featured ginger, it has not always been a bed of roses...  Maybe I'll get back to her and her sister's story another time..:-)

The English language and culture is one of my lifelong fascinations and I have been discovering something about it every day, sharing some of my little discoveries with my (former) students and various friends, who sometimes seemed not so pleased receiving my numerous emails, often loaded with pictures and links rather meaningless to them. Now, at long last, I have my blog, which I'd been meaning to start for ages, but again, needed friends' help to actually get it done!  I feel embarrassed about my lack of technical skills, but, as they say, you can' be good at everything, can you? ;-) Mind you, I bought myself the first computer in August 1995, had soon the Internet connected, but have I been making an excessive use of that?

Now, this simple blog is to be my communication platform. Somehow, despite much persuasion from colleagues, I steer pretty clear from social websites and never twit for a number of reasons... ;-)

So, if you've got this far, you may like to read a poem to which the origin of expression 'a 

bed of roses' I used above is attributed:

The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

by Christopher Marlowe  

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

The poem was published posthumously in 1599.  Marlowe died in 1593.

Glossary:

kirtle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtle (I had to look that one up myself, any native speaker who would admit to that? )

myrtle –here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrtus_communis , but I had a dear friend whose deceased wife's name was Myrtle, he couldn't help regretting that it was her not him driving on that fatal day…