I have been tagged!

It is always nice to find out that people read your musings – especially when the main reason for your blog is to stay in touch with all those people you love but are far away from, as it is the case for yours truly. Consequently, I was thrilled to find myself tagged by Tasha – I didn’t know she was reading, and now I do, and that makes me happy.

So first my 7 random facts:

1) I love random facts. Like that the Earth is 0.02 degrees hotter during full moon. Like that in France technically it is illegal for a woman to wear trousers (except when riding a horse or a bike) because of a law dated 1892 that was never abolished. Like that apparently coffee drinkers have sex more often than people who don’t drink coffee.

2) I share my birthday with, among others, John Coltrane, Ray Charles and Eurypides (although I sincerely do not know how did Wikipedia people manage to figure it out for that last one).

3) My very favourite place in the entire world are Tatra mountains in Poland (Zakopane). Any mountains make me happy, but there is just something about these particular peaks that makes it a true soul asylum for me. No demons can go there.

4) I sing most of the time. I try to keep it in my head when in public, but I quite often fail.

5) I love garlic sandwiches. One of the best things about being sick when I was little was my dad making them for me (cause garlic boosts up your defences and you’re sick in bed, so no one cares if you sweat it out and stink). Take a slice of bread, butter it, put chopped up raw garlic on it and finish off with some salt. Yum. (I have just made some for Manpreet, as she’s poorly and off work, she was sceptical at first but then loved them).

6) I can’t sleep without my stuffed dog. What can I say – a 25 years long habit is not easily lost. Not that I’ve tried though.

7) My favourite season is winter. Even if it is not snowing, although of course it is much better with snow. There is something about the crispness of the winter air that makes you feel more alive and makes everything sharper and more there. And then there are the evenings, dark and cold, which make your home and bed even cosier than usual.

And now for the tagging –
Tasha has already tagged some of the blogs I would have tagged, but there’s still one by an old friend of mine Ewelina and Carina’s culinary pages, and then some by people I don’t know but whose writing I enjoy: Annie Rhiannon, Morning Coffee, German Joys. I know it's not 7 but that's all I've got.

Some more on hair and minor panic crisis

“Gah!” I gasped, standing in Craig and Ann’s bathroom yesterday morning (well, afternoon), washing my hands. I gasped, because I had just glanced at myself in the mirror and spotted a streak of grey hair on the very top of my head. I gasped, and then I examined my head with great care, in case I was wrong, but I wasn’t, it was definitely there.
Oh God.
I composed myself as best I could, but then as soon as the boys were out of the room, I pointed to my head: “Look Ann, grey hair, right here!” Ann examined my head with great care and confirmed the presence of the horror. “All Paul’s fault” she ruled and we both giggled, but quite seriously, if I get a streak of grey hair just because my boyfriend omits to include me in a rice and naan order, then I’m in trouble. Cause then imagine when something actually wrong happens! I mean, soon I’m going to be back at school! I’m going to turn completely grey in no time! And I have nothing against grey hair as such, I actually think it looks dignified and am not planning on dying mine, but it’s way too early, I’m not even 31! (at least not for one more day, but that’s beside the point.)

Later on, back home, when Paul was in the shower, I made Carina pull the horror out of my head. There were all two of them.
But somehow they had managed to look like a whole streak.
I think I’m having a mild case of birthday panic…

(Explanatory note: Craig and Ann are friends of Paul’s, with whom we went to the Lake District and to Alton Towers and several other places.)

On modern art and deluge

Last weekend we went to London to see Carina, or at least that was the plan, cause the trip expanded as we went and so we also went to Milton Keynes to water plants and to Oxford to have Mexican food and see Cate. You know me, stick me in a car, put the music on and I’m happy – in other words, I love road trips, and this one definitely lived up to my expectations.

Saturday was eating, drinking and talking in Carina’s garden and nursing a sunburn I’ve miraculously acquired between Birmingham and London. An uneventful yet blissful summer evening.

On Sunday we went to Modern Tate and I liked it, in spite of my general disdain for modern art - at least for the kind where they put a huge red dot on yellow canvas and call it ‘Pain’, or something similar. I really liked the sculptures, especially the ones Paul said I wouldn’t want in my bedroom (I feel quite daft for having forgotten the artist’s name) and that looked as if someone had dripped hot iron into silhouettes.
I was however not spared a painting made up of squares of different colours entitled ‘Mediterranean’. I stared at it and stared at it, and the more I stared, the more it remained just a random selection of colours that did not evoke any associations, which I found frustrating as I had spent four years living in the very region that inspired the artist, so I should be able to see it. I know that it was the same region, cause I read the label – I thought it would help me understand as it did with some of the sculptures, but no luck. Squares remained squares.
There was also a mandatory set of paintings picturing female private parts from weird angles and a video installation featuring a naked guy jumping up and down, which made me giggle but which failed to inspire any art-worthy reactions. Oh well. Maybe I’m just too insensitive to comprehend the depth of those artists’ talent and inspiration, but I think I will live in spite of it.

As we were driving back on Monday, the sky fell. It was already grunting when we were leaving Oxford, and Cate had warned us about thunderstorms coming up from Cornwall, but I was not prepared for driving through a wall of water. I was quite relived when we got back to Brum in one piece, but then we were confronted with a huge lake on one of the main roads and had to go around it through the grass, which was exciting and scary as Paul’s car is not an SUV, so we could easily get stuck in the watered mud that the surrounding ground had turned into or slide with it down the slope and into the lake. Other options were staying in the car forever or taking a run for it and getting soaking wet while abandoning the car behind, none of which seemed appealing to either of us. But we didn’t get stuck or slide in the mud and got home safe and I could joyfully run around barefoot in the back garden getting soaking wet, knowing that the warm shower and hot tea were just seconds away.

Love and London

I went up to London this weekend to see Carina, cause Carina needed to see me and I needed to see her and we both needed to smoke, drink and talk until our eyes could not be held open by even the best quality matches (I have a feeling that the non-Poles will find this last statement slightly odd, but they will have to agree that it makes sense). On Saturday morning we met up with Claire, who I was certain was coming to London on a completely different weekend, and who ignored my presence in London completely, especially while I had had time to express my conviction on the inevitability of me not being there to see her via an apologetic e-mail. And I will never, ever forget the look on her face when she saw me. That image will make me happy for a long time. I mean, if you have just one person in your life who pulls such a face when seeing you, then you’re a lucky, lucky lady (or man, actually). And I have that on top of everything else, including being nursed and fed comfort food by Carina, who therefore officially weaned me off my longing for daddy when sick. I mean daddy made me tea. Carina makes tomato soup with smoked bacon and mozarella and then you get to talk and smoke and drink until you eyes can not be held open by even the best quality matches. Now, who can beat that.

On cheese and cats

Everyone should have a Caz. Caz makes me talk and feeds me good stuff. There’s no one like Caz to make the world look like a much better place than it seemed before. And Didier was a very silly frog – he hid so that he wouldn’t go to London with me. I actually thought I had lost him but Will the Cat found him for me. Will the Cat slept over last night (Nicole’s room is being painted and he has no other bed than mine) and so this morning it was head bonks for me which made getting up much less horrid, especially while he timed it perfectly – 5 minutes before the alarm. A much better way of waking up, that goes without saying.
So I'm starting the week revived and positive. We shall see how long it will last.