They do seem to be glowing a little bit
I know it is not the season, but these are the Christmas lights of Feldbrunnen, Switzerland along the local rail track, my village.
Daily Archives: 09/04/2016
Weekend Coffee Share: 4/9/16
If we were having coffee, it would be tea, but that is no problem for me. It would be a problem if it was coffee, but not because of the coffee. I quite like a cup of coffee, does the blood pressure good. The problem is the milk in the coffee. Over the last ten years I have had a digestive problem, but never really discovered why. It began with the coffee after dinner which had a very negative influence on my digestive system. I stopped drinking coffee and began to drink tea and the symptoms more or less disappeared. I never drank my tea with milk and because I am diabetic I left out the sugar.
I said the symptoms more or less disappeared, but there were times when they reoccurred, not very often, but to the extent that the quality of my food life was declining. Through trial and error I have not discovered that it all lies in the milk. I prodded into the problem further and mentioned on a doctor visit that I suspect I have a lactose allergy. Of course I could make a test with the doctor, but this incurs actually drinking what not is good for you and that would be a horror situation for me. I no longer eat ice cream or cream and have reduced my breakfast cereal with milk to a slice of wholemeal bread and jam, which I really like. Life is now better, my digestive system seems to be completely renewed and the problems have disappeared. Often I am my own doctor. I discovered at the local supermarket they have a complete range of lactose free ingredients including cream. I even had a word with my cheese salesman at the supermarket. He is the expert and told me I should avoid soft cheese and only go for the hard cheese. This is no problem as I prefer a nice chunk of Emmental to Camembert any time. So that problem is solved.
Otherwise I had a busy week as some time was spent on one of those super scans at the local clinic. I was asked before entering the machine if I suffered from claustrophobia, which I do not. She did not ask me how decibels of noise would affect my ears, although I was given headphones before the examination broadcasting the local radio station. Unfortunately the music was overpowered by the thump, thump, thump, bang, bang, screech, screech from the machine. It was very noisy. On the same day the specialist called me with the result. There will be another scan at the end of next week, with a further examination in the hospital. I just hate losing time on such things. I have more important things to do next week like writing my Pulitzer prize suspicious blogs and taking a few hundred photos.
Due to all these inconveniences, I never got around to reading so much this week, although I have one of those non-fiction books on the development of Dada in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century. It is very interesting, but hard going. I have now downloaded “The Girl With All The Gifts” by M.R.Carey on a recommendation by a WordPress super friend of mine. We seem to have the same tastes in literature and I am sure it will be a good read, which I will begin next week.
Hope you enjoyed the tea, see you next week same time same place.
Daily Prompt: Green
Yes, green, everything is green at the moment – almost everything. It can be a colour or a condition. At the moment, I prefer to stick to the colour, although I could be green with envy or perhaps be green if I had an injury.
I decided to take a walk around the garden yesterday with my super Nikon camera instead of a few quick shots with my telephone. Quick shots are ok if you do not have so much time to write all about it, but I decided to capture nature at the beginning of its growing season in detail. Here you can see my horse chestnut with the first leaves of Spring. It is not just a horse chestnut, but my horse chestnut grown from one of those brown hard round fruits that fall from the trees in Autumn. I had saved it and decided to see what would happen if I planted it in the garden.
As with all chestnuts, it began to grow. Unfortunately it was growing so thick and fast I decided it would be better in a pot. I bought the largest pot I found. This was about ten years ago and since I have a chestnut tree in a pot in my garden. The problem was that it disregarded the bounds of growth allowed in my garden and began to grow to a height that not only cast my bedroom in shade, but was planning on taking over the floors above, although there are only two. I cut the branches to keep it within the bounds of reasonability. I have been looking forward to my first flowers, and am still looking forward to them, but they have not yet appeared.
I asked my gardener and he said that some chestnut trees (yes he called it a tree) are sterile and never bloom, whilst others need time. I just read in Internet that the time could be at least 16 years meaning when I am perhaps 76 years old it might have its first flowers. In the meanwhile it is still growing and producing leaves fast and furious.
I am not really a fan of green, to be quite honest it is a colour I would never wear if I did not have to. There is a reason: my school uniform was green. In England it was, or perhaps still is, custom to wear a uniform at the higher schools. It all started when I was 11 years old at high school. Oh I did look pretty. In the first two years I was wearing a green tunic, even my knickers were green. the underwear had to be green probably to match the green shorts we wore for gymnastics. Everything was green. It was a wonder they did not inject us with green liquid to produce green skin. I also had a green gabardine raincoat (imagine Philip Marlowe in green) and to complete the picture my head was given a beret, french style, also in green. Of course to break the green monotony, we had the school badge on the beret. This was a problem, because the badge had to been seen at all times when wearing it. This meant that the front brim of the beret had to be visible at all times. We were not Catherine Deneuve replicas, but more replicas of army officers.
A further insult to the green intelligence was when we left school in the afternoon. We had to walk along the corridor to the exit. There were prefects, one on each side of the corridor. They inspected that state of our uniform and if a badge was not showing we were pulled on one side to refit the beret.
Luckily they did not insist on green shoes as these were not really available. It had to be plain brown, with a flat heel and no frim fram on the side. If we survived and reached the third form, the green tunic transformed itself into a green skirt and to finalise the perfect appearance, we wore a green and red striped tie with a cream coloured blouse. Luckily my dad instructed me at the age of 13 how to do a simple tie knot. We were not allowed to use the Windsor knot, that would probable have been too much avant garde. In summer we were allowed to wear a summer gingham pattered dress. One of those with little squares as a pattern and as red was also a side dish we could wear a green or red pattrened dress. The only colleagues that really looked good in green were those with red or ginger hair, it seemed to complement their hair colour. Otherwise we all resembled something that had escaped from an institute.
I was at this school until I reached the age of 17 and since that day I have rarely been seen wearing anything resembling green. It is a wonder that I eat green vetetables, although I am quite partial to brussel sprouts and beans. My autistic son will not touch a green vegetable which probably explains the general attitude towards the colour green.
Good Morning
I decided to treat myself to something completely different for the small table in the front garden. It is the garden everyone sees when they enter the appartment house, so I decided to make sure it made an impact. They were selling them last year, but after a discussion with you know who, I was persuaded to forget the whole thing. However, this year they had a new selection.
It is not just a model of a cat, but he has big eyes. He has solar panelsin the back of his head and if there is sun, his eyes begin to shine like two lamps. It is quite effective, and they were already shining while I was on the way to the garden with him. Since then I have not noticed any change. Actually my idea was that they would shine at night to light up the garden and scare any burglers away, but that did not work as unfortunately the sun does not shine at night, although I have not made a visit to the garden at night to see what happens. I quite like him, he who will not be mentioned has not yet passed a comment negative or positive, so I assume he can stay.
I went for a walk in my garden with the big Nikon camera yesterday. I must say there is a difference in taking photos with the super lens as with the telephone.
I decided to take a close-up of my grape hyacinths which are now beginning to blossom.
Today is Saturday, so I will not be taking any great leaps and bounds into town. I will send my assistant for anything urgently needed. He likes to sample the coffee in the street café in town, whilst he is there, although he did say something about visiting his rehearsal room to see if his drums are still there.
I also have my hobbies of course, although I had to strike ironing from the list, as I did not need to let the washing machine run through its programme yesterday – what a disappointment.
As nothing exciting or worth a mention in our local newspaper has happened in my village with its 1,000 inhabitants, I will now leave you. As soon as the neighbour’s garden is showing the first green shoots of the new lawn I will let you know. At the moment they only doing a daily inspection.
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 