I was hugging my bed when Mr. Swiss reminded me he had an early appointment this morning, not really early, but for a golden oldie early. And then I heard the rain outside pitter pattering on the scaffolding surrounding our appartment block – how romantic. So I left my bed and looked out of the window, progressed to the kitchen for a bite for breakfast, and somewhere in between I took a photo of the morning sky with its 50 shades of grey. I am not going anywhere today, just taking it easy wiping over a few windows and cooking lunch.

As we were leaving the supermarket yesterday I saw this dog obediently waiting for his owner, or whatever dogs have. Cats have slaves, but it seems that dogs are very obedient and prefer to receive orders than give them. Any this was a dog that seemed to know what it wanted.  As I moved closer for a better photo, Mr. Swiss warned me as he found this dog did not look very friendly. Heedless of the warning I took the risk and managed to shoot a prize winning photo. He was even smiling at me showing all his pearly white teeth.

On the drive home I noticed that the apparment blocks where Mr. Swiss once lived in his fancy free days no longer existed. It took a month to erase them from the map, but something much better, more luxurious and expensive will replace them.

I had to have a little chuckle yesterday. I am a follower of the Daily Prompt on WordPress and although some do not like the reader, I do. It is easier for me to find the latest writings of the WordPress community on the computer as well as my iPad. Looking through my e-mails is a tedious task. I prefer the illustrated WordPress version. Yesterday we had the theme “foggy” and of course I joined in with my words of “wisdom”. I skipped through other contributions and found a wonderful display of foggy photos, we all seemed to have them. I live in mist and fog in October and November, as a river runs through out just along the path. I grew up in the London smog, so it was not an unknown theme for me, although I attacked it from a different point of view.

I have a couple of news channels on my iPad/computer. One of them “20 minutes” is a Swiss thing, a bit commercial and no great news station, but yesterday they had a short video showing a hotel on the Canary Islands, where the customers are mainly Brits and Germans. Now we Brits do have a strong territorial need. We are still clinging onto Gibraltar, although it is only a few apes and a big rock. However, this extends itself to the holdiays.

My dad would spend his annual holiday in Spain with his lady friend as her son owned a small appartment there and they could use it. Of course the brits are sun starved during the year and so the most important aspect of holidays in Southern countries is finding the sun. This hotel in the Canary Islands have 500 guests and only 150 sun beds by the swimming pool. Every morning the hotel caretaker or whever, unlocks the gate to the sun beds and pool at 8.00 a.m. Mainly the Brits, and some Germans are already queing outside. The film shows how the guests pour into the sun bed area armed with their towels. Throw your towel on a bed and it is yours, is the motto. Some of the tourists even throw two or three towels just to make sure that their claim is made. I remember my dad once proudly telling us that the got to know the spanish guy in charge of the sunbeds where they stayed and he would reserve my dad and his girlfriend two sunbeds in the morning, so his claim to the sun was saved.

The article I read said that it lays in the territorial instincts of animals to mark their places. Some animals just spray urin, and those higher in the scale (humans?) just use and object, such as a bath towel. Let’s face it, urin is not our thing.

Mr. Swiss and I spend our holidays at home outside on the porch and we have our own sun bed, but we Swiss are not really sun starved as other Europeans are.

I am rambling on again and I should really be doing something more sensible like removing the jam stains on the table and computer and perhaps have a shower. Yes I am the unwashed at the computer in the morning, but no stress. What else does a golden oldie have, we need our stressless mornings. I will leave you with yesterday’s shot of our local mountain Weissenstein in the Jura mountains. Have fun, look after yourselves, above all your computers, and let us return later.