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26/01/2011

I hope this isn't too tasteless...

This week's Gallery is all about children.
Lots of people posted pictures of beautiful, adorable babies and children.
But I think I've posted enough pics of my two here already. And as to pictures of us, the blogging sisters, you've already seen plenty.
So for this post, I'm asking you to spare a thought for children who are not beautiful or adorable: zombie children.


As the title says....


Oh, one last thing. If you liked this post, would you mind terribly clicking on the RSS feed, here, or the Google connect buttons (top left), or by email at the bottom of this page? And if you didn't like it, you might still want to look around. There's three of us, you know, so you're (almost) bound to find something you like. And then, if you've still got time, you could share this post or stumble it, or both and get in touch with your local tv station to sing our praises. We'll love you forever.

23/01/2011

Of dreams and sea-shells.

I had a dream: I was listening to a documentary about sea shells. Somebody was saying that there was only a very limited number of different kinds of sea shells in the world, that explorers had for a long time roamed seas and oceans trying to discover new types of shells, but to no avail.

You could forgive them for thinking there would be  a wide variety given the amount or weird stuff you find in the sea! But whenever they would discover a new layer of the ocean, a body of water previously unexplored, the same dozen or so of sea-shells would turn up, no more.

In my dream I remember thinking of the time I spent in sand pits as a child, finding tiny shells, wondering how they had made it all the way to my playground in a parisian subburb, and I thought: when children all over the world play in the sand, they find the same shells. It's all a repeating pattern. It never changes.

There you go. It doesn't mean much. I'm not even confident it was a dream - maybe a daydream brought on by some actual show I was listening to. It was brought back to me this morning as I was cleaning out my desk with the intent of working on it and I found these:

20/01/2011

Social media Gaga

For this week's Mama Kat's workshop, I chose prompt #5 'How has social media changed you'.

My immediate thought was 'well, I am not choosing that one, seeing as I am the exact same person I was before the advent of social media'. Right. Hem. After a few seconds, I realized that I would probably be slightly depressed if I didn't have an easy access to Facebook for more than, say, two hours.

I check it at home, on my Blackberry and at work. I originally joined because Sandrine thought it would be a good place to share pictures and thoughts. Gradually, I looked for friends, people found me and, as much as I hate to admit it, I was addicted in no time.

I love it. I love the way I think of a status update and write it, secretly hoping my friends will laugh. I love checking my buddies' pictures, being a part of their everyday life.

My personal favorite is the chat option. It's like the phone, only better. And you get to chat with two or three people at the same time.

I know it's superficial, shallow, I know it's a unique marketing tool, but seriously, I'm in this world, I want to share. Sharing is my thing, you see. I hate being alone and Facebook keeps me close to the ones I love.

So yeah, it changed me a little, because I didn't need it before, but really, I've always been like that. I become addicted easily. I think it's the tools that change, not us.

19/01/2011

Wood and Water.

When we go to the Aegean coast we travel by train. Arriving back in the morning, I wake up and I see home. Gone are the olive trees, the pink laurels, the dark green hills and the deep blue sea. What I see outside the window is endless rounded hills, huge, smooth, yellow, and topped with the highest sky I have ever seen. That's when I know I'm home.

15/01/2011

Thoughts from the treadmill

Melvin Bragg is introducing a program on Cleopatra. A woman woman with a mind like crystal and a voice to match explains why Egypt at that time wasn't unlike a modern state, full of debts. I can't focus, and my legs are heavy. What do I care if the Ptolemies slept with their brothers and sisters? I just want to go home, watch tv. I can't believe that less than a month ago, I was here, three times a week, working out like nobody's business.

13/01/2011

Smile

Wow, what a week this has been. And it's not even over yet. I lost my voice, again. Not because of a nightmare, but an oedema which thought my vocal cords looked cool enough to go sit on them. Well, just the right one, actually.

So I can't speak. Rather, I'm not supposed to. But you know me, it's hard to shut me up.

I'm happy. As in, delirious with joy. The world never looked so beautiful, the future is full of promises and each day, for the past five mornings, I've woken up and smiled. It had been a while. Not that I wasn't smiling, you see, I smile a lot, but these days, the smile looks different.

I won't say why, because it's a long story, though I sure hope I'll tell you all about it someday.

But I thought I might share this with you.

Smile, people. Life is beautiful.


02/01/2011

LOVE







This was sister3's entry for tara's gallery week 40
Thetheme thi week was LOVE



HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

01/01/2011

Of coffee, country cottages and Christmas coincidences

While I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, I came across an old friend I hadn't seen since I  was a child. I found it on a shelf in my mother's kitchen.



It used to sit on the mantle piece of the big stone fireplace in the common room in our grandparents' country cottage. In that fire place there was a big old black cauldron, some stokes, and in winter, a log or two, crackling because they were covered in dried moss. This is where our parents would heat the water to fill the plastic bucket in which they washed us. The tiny stone sink only had cold water coming out of it. On the mantle piece next to the grinder, there was a big jar filled with empty matchboxes, the big kind, that my sisters and cousins and I used as temporary homes for any insects we caught. Temporary as in last, unfortunately.

I used to play with the grinder, trying to make flour with grains I'd pick up on my walks. The idea was to make bread with it. When I reminded my mother of that, she said she used to have to grind the coffee in it as a child, and how it used to hurt her legs as she would hold it between her thighs. This does bring some perspective to the popularity of instant coffee - if you spent your childhood handgrinding coffee beans, it must be a relief just to pour water on granules! Nah. It makes no sense. The stuff's disgusting.

In our home, we make coffee in a metal pot with a filter on top.


I bought it for one pound in Holloway twenty years ago, on the day I moved to London. But it takes a while to make filter coffee by hand, so we keep it in the pot and then it goes not so nice, or on a busy morning, we go without coffee, which is never a good thing.

So, this year, I had a bright idea for a present for 'Im indoors. Something that would allow us to make coffee quickly and without making a mess. And 'Im indoors had the exact same thought.


I think it's time for another cup of coffee. Fancy one?
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