Still not the Pantheon

Oh dear, why do work and other such time-consuming activities take up so much of my valuable blogging time? I am SO tired.

But I’ll just snatch a few minutes from the fast-flowing stream of life to record the odd thought.

1) Thank you for all your sympathy! Much appreciated. The insurance man came, tore large bits of the wallpaper off to see how damp the walls and ceiling were (fairly) and installed three large and noisy fans to dry them out. It all looks horrid. But at least we no longer have to worry about the catlets damaging the wallpaper…

2) Loth asked about the Trevi Fountain – no, we didn’t find it disappointing, exactly: we found it red. Someone had thrown red dye into it shortly before we arrived. It looked horribly sanguinary. Lots of police were standing around gazing at it and not letting anyone very near it, though it did seem a bit late for that. We think it was a political protest; the following day there was a Communist rally nearby.

We saw it again a few days later and it was normal.

3) When replying, embarrassed, to your kind enquiries about our gastronomic adventures, I concealed our finest hour from you. We spent most of the time walking around Rome, which is conveniently organised so that most of the stuff you want to visit is within a few miles of the other stuff. One evening we arrived back at the hotel and collapsed on the bed, exhausted. After a while, I said to Mr Life, “Well, how about dinner?”

Very unusually for him, he didn’t immediately leap to his feet at the prospect of nourishment.

“Or,” I suggested, “we have a packet of fig rolls and a bottle of water.”

“That sounds fine,” he said from his supine position.

So that was our gourmet Italian meal: two fig rolls each and half a bottle of water.

4) – And most exciting of all – we got visited yesterday by an Australian blog friend – Fifi of “Strange Fruit”! She was in Glasgow giving a lecture at a conference, and came across to Edinburgh. It was very weird but very nice indeed, to meet her. The weirdness was because we knew quite a lot about each other and yet there were huge gaps in our knowledge. She had a terrible journey, since Scotrail had decided to dig the line up or something, so she was transferred to a bus and then she was going to have to go back again by some circuitous route. It was so kind of her to bother and I was a bit anxious that she was going to find us very boring and not worth the tedious journey; however, she concealed this very well. She met the catlets (and they met her), the husband and Daughter 2 – Daughter 1 had gone home by the time Fifi arrived, and Son was visiting his girlfriend up north. Fifi is lovely!

5) Finally - these are knitted ghosts. Or at least, that’s what we consider them to be. I’d love to claim that I made them but cannot tell a lie: I bought them some years ago at a sale of work at the church. You know the situation – I felt obliged to buy something but there was nothing I wanted. Then I spied these. “What are they?” I asked. The lady behind the counter didn’t really know but suggested that they might be ghosts. Well, of course that did it. What would any household be without a few knitted ghosts?

Happy Hallowe’en!