Broiling hot

YES it's very hot indeed... I believe "broiling" is the word some of you Americans use when you mean you're putting something under the grill... and that's how hot it is today. I'm sweating like an amphibious swine, it's terrible. If I were going to be like a swine I would want to be something like a Japanese pig-dog, a buta-inu 豚犬 like those trotter Norfolk and Glen of Imaal terriers from the other day, who look like a wild boar, minus the little trotter tusks.
In all this heat I've been reading Grimms Märchen ~ meine Familie sent me a charming antique volume in the original German, so I've been reading that. It's from the early 20th century, printed in the curly blackletter type with the kind of Edwardian colour illustrations I really like (they remind me of my own childhood, reading handmedowns from my grandparents' era) ... nearly all German books were printed in Gothick type prior to World War II. I think it looks really funky. Why SHOULD everything look sanseriph and crap just because we're in 2010?
I've been trying to dig out youtube screens that teach Japanese for my language blog. There's plenty about, it's just a question of pasting up the good ones. I actually had better luck with Chinese, because the BBC ~ who usually do this stuff well ~ made some excellent teach yourself Mandarin videos for late night TV. I do want to learn Chinese as well, but don't want to overburden and lose my thread... Confucius, he say: he who chase two rabbits catch neither one...

This song reminds me of doing GCSE French at school... here in the UK it got to number 5 in 1988... in much of continental Europe, including the Soviet Union, it got to number one the previous year...

DESIRELESS: VOYAGE VOYAGE



And finally ~ how could I drop the dogs theme? ~ we have CARKIES ~~
Doggies who are Yorkshire-Cairn Terrorizer Cross




Did I say very much? Did I say what I wanted to say? Did I remember? My brainbox is too well broiled to know..!

PS I didn't think I was that fussy, but the two major doggie rescue centres I consulted had only one small mop mutt each: Eddie at Battersea Dogs' Home, South London and Scruffy (as mentioned the other day) at the Wood Green Animal Shelter, North London. I couldn't take either one as both have been rehomed, the lucky 豚犬 butas! Eddie is only about one and a half, but Scruffy is seven... I wonder what happened to them?... do you think their old owners died? Poor little swines. I hope they are happy now ... poor little furries :-)

Weary golden retriever

I MET two weary golden retrievers outside the shops this morning... trotting along the street, then waiting patiently outside as their master purchased beer and cigs, or whatever, for breakfast... they did look weary indeed, all golden and patient. I think they must have been girls as they were evidently quite old and not puppies, but nowhere near as large as the pitbullesque golden retrievers down the park. Hang on a sec ~ I think those ARE pitbulls ;->...

Is it true Americans don't use the expression "golden retriever" and call them something suitably obscure like Sunshine Labradors..?

You know my Akita 秋田犬 obsession got started off in earnest when a giant fluffy grey-a-brindle female one came bounding up to me in the park a few weeks ago and stared silently at me with this mystical intensity that seems peculiar to that breed... she is so beautiful.

Next time I saw her she came right up to me again but the owner said it was my bags of shopping she was interested in. I had no goodies on me the first time, so I like to think there's more going on with this mystical connexion between me and 日本犬 Japanese inu than plain old cupboard love... but who knows?

Daffodils!

To coin a phrase, it is an awesomely sunny day today. I feel the sunlight shining right into my head and behind my eyes and illuminating some long-shrouded cobweb-ridden granny-attick in my brain... quite luminous and lucid, I feel. How amazing to be in summer at long last. OK, mid-spring, but BRIGHT and SHINY and NEW!! Everything is Amazing!! And the daffodils are out, like smiling faces all a-cheer in rows. Such a lovely day.

I had Lidl's best stuffed spinnaci e rocotta tortelloni for breakfast, topped with mysterious mixed grated cheese and cod-in-parsley sauce. Most civilized.

I even feel a little less boring than per normal.

Hope y'all are having a cheery day too, in those far-flung habitations of y'all...

OPTIKONFUSION
Close your eyes ~ forget your name ~ forget the world ~ forget the people ~~ GO INSANE
I used to love this hardcore "rave" track in days of yore... days so long ago that this, the music of my young adulthood is referred to by kiddies of today as OLD SCHOOL... how wizzening can you get?

Spring's A-sprung!

THE WEATHER here in London is beautiful, but I haven't got a camera. So here instead is the 日本の春 Japanese springtime!

Mount Fuji 富士山 through the famous cherry blossom...



Japan's interior images are serene and beautiful.
Taishō Pond 大正池 in Kamikōchi Valley 上高地の谷, central Honshu 本州. Mount Hotaka 穂高岳, highest in the Hida Range 飛騨山脈, also known as the Northern Japanese Alps 日本の北部のアルプス, is in the centre background.



Sublime cherry blossoms 吉野の桜, Mount Yoshino 吉野山 near Nara 奈良市, Japan's ancient capital AD 710-784:



Isn't this amazing!!

Blue Skies!

IT'S A GORGEOUS DAY TODAY AND I'VE BEEN CLEANING MY HOUSE! At long long last. And doing things and addressing things that have gone too long unadressed and undone because I was wallowing in an apathy of ordures, as the French charmingly call their shyte.

Yesterday I had the final consultation in my mental health "probe" (to use Sunday newspaper language). As I told the Operative, I finally wish to address my "issues" in a grown-up way that was not possible previously when I was too para to throw my problems on the table without feeling outmanoevred ~ even checkmated ~ before I even started...

I have two appointments, possibly with two doctors though one's the Shrink. I told the Operative of many of my tangled jangling past of unusual experience. Now the Operative's going to give the Shrink a summary before I go in. So for once I might get a proper assessment instead of a doctor barking up the wrong tree and me too eager to flee out the room to bother putting him right. I always felt whatever I said, whatever I did, circumstances would conspire against me and thwart my efforts at tidying my mess up or building any future. This was another fuel to my Great Apathy.

My Worker was all aglow with praise at my transformation but there's still such a lot of transforming left to do. Today I've to get on with cleaning my house. It's gone scuzzier than I realized, when I suddenly see it through "normal people's" eyes. Then I have to clean up my SELF. And then build a future. Not much to do then.


Q U E E N R E P R I M A N D S P R I M E M I N I S T E R
S i l v i o B e r l u s c o n i y e l l s a t B a r r a c k O b a m a
d u r i n g B u c k i n g h a m P a l a c e p h o t o s h o o t : ~
f a b u l o u s l y f a m o u s e n t e r t a i n i n g f o o t a g e
o f t h e v u l g a r I t a l i a n P M b e i n g p u t i n h i s p l a c e . . .

Spring's Sprung (...somewhere!)

I'M NOT SURE what date the first day of spring "officially" falls in this country, but I'm pretty sure it's not yet fallen... despite a bracing freshness in the air... even in urban London. If I remember rightly it's sometime mid-March or early-April even. Nevertheless, spring IS officially here (or there) in several places across the Northern Hemisphere... (chilly old Russia included)... so in the lamb-leaping spirit of things I'm glorifying today with blue skies and daffodils.

Somebody chatting on the radio on Sunday really cheered me up... saying lambs are the only animals who leap for the sheer joy of living. Wow! How that must feel. I remember the wind blowing one time years ago and how this implacable urge toward dancing struck me... I remember waking and feeling those blue skies rayed with gold and thinking what wondrous opportunities would I partake in today...

Feelings that have long gone, of course. But at least I remember having them. At least I've been there. All too many people live in a near-professional state of misery because they've either not been there or doggedly refuse to acknowledge that they have. One professional miseryguts I knew in times past declared me to be naive. Well I think she was naive. It's so easy to reduce life to a tiling of black and white absolutes when actually its saturated in every living colour... even if a lot of it is very dismal and dark!

I don't know what on earth I was wazzling on about yesterday? Did anyone make sense of my post? (Because I barely can. In the clear light of mid-evening.) One person told me to "get a grip"! I have a grip!! It's just sometimes such luxury to let go!

And so back to lambs... I've even seen roborovskis a-leaping (you knew I'd bring this round to hamsters somehow; surely...) Itchy was being fractious with Bashful (which she never used to be. Perhaps spring's in the robbie-air too... or more to the point tiny Baby Itchy's fed up of being tiniest bottom-of-the-pecking-order... (poor swine!)... and while she was pinging about and hurtled straight at Bashful, Bashful literally sprang up directly in the air, allowing the supersonic Itchy to pass safely underneath...

... and how was YOUR day~??

Another World:
Foreign Blog of the Day: the Malay Educational System

Is shyness an illness?
read~ BBC News: Social Phobia
read and "listen again"~ Am I Normal: Social Phobia

ps: as Nicole accurately pointed out, the "lamb" ecstatically sniffing daffodils on the left is actually a baby GOAT (OK, OK, I know: it's called a "kid"...) also, spring begins in Europe officially on 21st of March (whereas Australia's official starting dates for autumn and spring are the 1st of March and September...)