Wednesday 29 August 2012

One day

296 to me and 297 to Mama. I had most of the vowels and she had most of the consonants. One day I shall beat her!!

Our final layout

Sunday 26 August 2012

Christmas came early

Today the island smells of Christmas, with liquid resin dripping from the pines above.

It started around 1 o'clock in the afternoon with heavy, dark clouds and a few gentle spots of rain, maybe a few distant rumbles of thunder. Suddenly, all went black, as if dusk had come upon us and the wind picked up, causing the bay tree to bend almost horizontal.

We locked up shop, taking everything indoors. As we shut the front door shutters, the rain began to fall in sheets and the clean tiles in the garden were covered with debris. We went to lock the window shutters from inside the bedroom and debris was blowing in horizontally through the back bedroom window right into my eyes, making it hard to see. Then the hailstones began to fall, the size of ten pence pieces. I was so glad I'd decided not to go swimming!

It lasted maybe 15 minutes, maybe half an hour, then it was gone, a peaceful and gentle rain falling and the dark skies lifting to a paler shade of grey.

We've just come back from an exploratory walk around the island, now covered in the debris of trees and other plants, to see dozens of enormous pines snapped in half and torn from their roots, some breaking concrete where they landed. In the hospital park, one sequoia snapped at about six foot and fell, narrowly missing a row of windows where it landed. Agave plants have been torn from their roots too, especially those that are 12 foot tall and taller, in flower.

The damage is very specific, worst in the harbour behind the church, but mostly only one or two trees hurt, with all others around intact and happy with the feeding of rain after almost three months of sunshine. We think it may have been another tornado, similar to one we had when I was small, but it's hard to know.

The sun is shining again, six hours later, and everywhere is open for business as usual, just with fresh piles of chopped pine wood to the side and pine needles carpeting the ground.

Enough excitement for the day. It's time to make dinner and return to business as usual here too.

Friday 24 August 2012

1104m and beer

I've been swimming across the bay and back of my favourite bay (here) and just tried to work out far it is. I'm terrible at estimating distances and although I knew it was quite a bit longer than my usual pool lengths of 25m, I guessed it to be about 75m across. This meant, in my mind, that swimming across and back twice, would be like doing 12 lengths and with my aim of 10 lengths a day, this was good going - especially with the waves and currents making it all a little bit harder.

Today I did three runs across the bay and back and I became curious, so I just checked it out on t'internet. Turns out that the distance (if I manage a properly straight line, which I never do) is just over 184m. Which means today I did more than 1,104m swimming - my straight lines not being at all straight and my efforts including a detour to meet a woman's niece halfway across the bay to retrieve a bag containing a can of beer for aforementioned woman.

Speaking of which, it is most odd to meet someone for the first time when you're both swimming naked. Especially when they want to shake hands. Not being able to quite see her outstretched hand under the waves, I was a little anxious about grasping the wrong thing and shaking hands under water anyway is odd. As it turned out, it was all fine, but saying "Pleased to meet you" while bobbing up and down and trying to retrieve a can of beer, is a most peculiar experience.

Incidentally, I knew the woman already and have been chatting to her, a lovely Slovenian woman, since I was small. It wasn't a completely random meeting.

Thursday 23 August 2012

Sticky

After a rather frustrating morning in Zagreb, not knowing how to turn on gas, I had a cold shower and no polenta for breakfast. Thankfully, Croatian bakeries are amazing, so I bought a slanica (salty thing - soft bread stick with a slight saltiness to its surface) and a kind of apple strudel. The journey was calm and I had a great seat on the coach - front seat, almost as if I was driving.

On board the ferry, finally, I bought tea, did some work on my laptop and then sat on top deck in the hot sunshine, watching the water roll back in frothy white waves alongside the boat.

We managed a swim, my Mama and I, and played catch in the water too. Later in the evening, when all I wanted was to sleep, we went to visit the nuns, her nuns, her friends. We listened to them, and some children, play piano and flute and sing songs. It was quite delightful but by 9.15pm I was well and truly ready for bed.

This morning I finished off my work, sitting in the shade of the oleander and the mandarin tree my brother planted over 30 years ago and then, later, we walked down into the harbour to buy some yummy veggies and olives. Now, I shall be going for a walk in the hills to Javorna to get some swimming and peace on a far away beach, hopefully able to cool down in the sea for a while before trekking back across the hills, the dust of the paths sticking again to my hot skin.

Tonight we have a fresh fish BBQ at a my uncle and aunt's, along with numerous cousins and their children. It will be a good feed for sure, though I hope I can avoid the customary 'appetiser' that I have never enjoyed, to my mind too much like paint stripper. Terribly ungrateful of me, I know.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

Teta Tugica

The wardrobe door, when I opened it, reminded me of Narnia, except instead of Narnia, it was a world where my aunt was still alive. The scent of her clothes suddenly created a tiny chink that let through a glimmer of hope that she is still alive somewhere around the corner, waiting for me. Then, the scent overwhelmed me as I was hit with a whole range of micro emotions I can't even identify.

It's funny. Everything goes round in circles: grief, sadness and acceptance, until finally you get to a slightly heavy, gently sad place of knowing everything is as it is and life goes on even when life has gone. It's impossible to change how things are and true acceptance is one of the most wonderful gifts we have. This slightly heavy, gently sad place of knowing is still settling in my heart and it's okay. In among the weight is the dancing pleasure of having known her and knowing that I knew her soul, her humour and her love.

HOT

Not felt even the slightest bit of cold since I stepped off the plane. Well, that's a lie. My feet felt cold when I washed them in cold water in the sink, but they're hot again now. I almost didn't wash them, but I heard my Mama's voice in my ear and I remembered how, as a child, I would scramble into bed with dirty feet and she would grab them, one by one, from under the sheets and wipe them clean with a damp facecloth. I was a good girl this evening, washing my feet, and I can rest easy in her clean sheets knowing my feet are clean too.

Sleeeeeep. And then tomorrow more travels down to the coast to see my teacher of how to have clean feet.

Croatian English Croatian

When I got the coach from the airport the bus driver spoke to the guy in front of me (incidentally, the guy next to me on the plane) in English. He then looked at me. Opened his mouth and shut it. Looked at me again. Then he spoke to me in Croatian.

I'm not sure what it was. Maybe my slight tan and freckles from having been outdoors for four days camping and cycling - suggested I wasn't English. Maybe my confident attitude - suggested I'd been there before. Or maybe it was just because I was tired of waiting so, after putting my suitcase under the bus in the baggage bit, I walked up to the front of the queue and handed him my 100 kuna note.

Pushing to the front of the queue like a true Croat. I am very proud of myself.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Potential

Someone once said to me "never love a man for his potential" meaning I should love him for what he is now.

This morning I woke up and I suddenly remembered that and I have now decided it is wrong. At the time, it stopped me dating men who were nowhere near their potential and had no desire to get there, and so it saved me from unhappiness.

Now, I think it's important for me to be able to love a person for their potential, because this is what helps people to reach the heights they can only dream of. Expect that someone will get there - not now, not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but eventually. Expect that someone can achieve the best that they can be, and they will - not necessarily how you or they might envisage, but in the way they are meant to.

I think the saying should be "Love a man for who is today and for who he will be tomorrow, but don't expect him to be today who he cannot be until tomorrow."

I am also aware that I am not speaking just of men or people you date, but of all people.

That sits better with me.

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Thank you to my pet robotic rat

It appears that my pet robotic non-George rat really was looking after me. I passed my driving test first time. Hurrah!

I go from a single woman who doesn't drive to a married driver in the space of a month and I am finding this a huge identity shift. Exhausting.

Must eat and go out to see clients. I can sleep tonight...

Not George

So I had a very strange dream last night. I was in some kind of lab, or classroom or something and everyone had a pet mouse or a pet rat.

I started off with a pet mouse, but he ran away and was so tiny that I couldn't catch him. Then they (whoever 'they' were) gave me a pet rat. As we spoke - because, to everyone else's surprise, my rat could speak - it emerged that he was a robotic rat and he had been assigned to me for some purpose, kind of like my guardian. Those that had assigned him were not the 'they' I mentioned before, but some higher power who I was not aware existed. They did not know of this higher power either - only my pet robotic rat knew of him or her. My rat also told me that he had AI and was perfectly capable of any task I should choose to assign him.

Finally, he told me his name. I thought he was going to tell me it was George or something else equally sensible, but it was a two-part name that is now hovering on the periphery of my memory, something like Reasonably Practical or Sensibly Reasonable or Practically Normal. None of these things, but something very similar.

I am left with an oddness in my mind, as if something happened of importance or maybe that his name was very important, but now I have forgotten it and maybe this is a bad thing...but even so, I have a sense he is somewhere in my mind, prowling the corridors of my neurons to make sure that everything is functioning as it ought to be.