As Bill Shakespeare said “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Just do not stick your nose too far into the rose, you never know what might be living there.
Monthly Archives: November 2017
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Fences and Gates
A gate to a house in the walls of Solothurn, Switzerland
Sometimes photos do not arrive as you want them too, on the other hand a fence is also interesting, even if you actually wanted to take a photo of what was behind the fence.
And some even build walls around their homes.
Daily Prompt: Welcome to the computer zoo
I suppose it is my own fault, I have too many animals in my zoo. Most of the time they are sleeping. They breathe when you connect them to the electricity. I am looking at the window at the moment and what do I see. the animal is awakening, being fed with a new food called Windows 10 creator, because it is Fall, although I was sure it is now winter. It had this food once before. It digested it and it kept it inside its entrails, I did have a quick look to see if it was full of beneficial vitamins, we wll want our computers to thrive, grow and go places, perhaps even multiply. I decided that creator was not my thing and so I kept it in a cage, never unleashed.
Today they are doing it again. It has given birth to part 2, another extension to the zoo. I can now have 3d animals in my world. Do not want them and have enough with the 3d animals in my real world. I can even animate them. There are many animals, known as politicians, which had better not been animated, so let sleeping animals lie, cannot use them. I have new emojis, emojis. Do I have room for them, what do they eat, and are they those silly things that are used for decorations. I have a smiley, who needs more. Oh, I have just seen you only get them with a US keyboard. We Brits again go home empty keyboarded, but who cares. My computer is now breathing quite regularly, taking deep breaths. I think it has an asthma attack, only another 10% to go, on the second installation.
I can now pin my new animal contacts to the task bar. It is a small task bar, I hope they have room. My animals will talk to me through Skype. Unfortunately I am not a follower of Skype. There was a time when Skype had its own cage, but I realised there were too many unknown animals prowling around, the call of the wild. I cast them out into the wilderness.
I can pin sites I use frequently: been there and done that without this new update in my zoo. I can now talk instead of type. I talk enough when I am not on the computer. They are all glad when I am quiet. Another animal I will not be needing. I can fix a letter without starting over – do what? Oh, I need a digital pen, never had one and never wanted one.
It is now closing time at the Winows zoo, I have seen all I want to see. I have got a delivery of many new animals, but I will not be taking them for walks. They will stay in their cages and sleep. In the meanwhile there is a new start. If I no longer appear today, you know the animals have eaten me.
“The update for Windows 10 is being configured – 100% completed – do not swich off the computer”
Good Morning
Look what is happening in my little part of the world. Yes, it began to snow about an hour ago. The ground is cold so now it will probably remain with us today. How glad I am that I do not have to go anywhere in particular. We are stocked up with enough food until tomorrow, so we will not starve. Even my birds have enough to eat. We dragged another 5 Kg bag of food home for them yesterday. Am I glad that I no longer have to go to a workplace.
My rosemary is now completely covered in the white stuff.
Yesterday I eventually did it. I ordered my new iPhone X. The delivery date is about 2 weeks, although the guy at the store said they no longer have such long waiting times. Why does a golden oldie do such weird stuff? Little things please little minds and I love learning all this modern stuff. Now I just have to look at my new phone to switch it on it seems. Mr. Swiss muttered something about an iTunes backup to prepare for the installation of my new phone, so I will gladly let him do the necessary. He left me on my own with the guy in the store and took a walkabout around the mall and I began to get confused. I was being asked all sorts of questions about our phone supplier, whether we have this or that. I had to call Mr. Swiss to help me out. There are some things that are just a little above my head and all in Swiss German. Of course I understand the language, but sometimes it gets a little complicated.
The next big arrival on my list will be my wheelchair which means a lot to me. I can walk, although need support with my cane. Since my two falls outside I have become very uncertain. My left leg decides to separate itself from my body without telling me about it first and suddenly you are down without a possibility of standing up again independently. Mr. Swiss is nervous about letting me into the garden, and to be quite honest so am I. I am now suffering from cabin fever. At home there are no large spaces to get lost in, but outside it is a different problem. Going to the supermarket gets me out of the house and I have a trolley to hang onto, but taking walks with my camera no longer comes into the question. A zimmer frame could also be a solution, but not for me. I want my independence and I do not want to have to rely on others. Taking photos with a zimmer frame for support is not ideal for me, so I go the whole hog. I can now change lens in comfort without searching for a bench and I can also take my extra lens with me.
It seems Mr. Trump (President – no I do not think so, you have to deserve that title) has put his big foot in it again with a Tweet, and is now telling GB to solve its problems. There is a pending invitation for this idiot to visit Britain, but nothing has been arranged up to now.
And now to my little world. I will be pottering around, might clean a few windows for the lack of something more intelligent to do. I leave you with a photo taken by me from the car, of our local mountain Weissenstein, this time in the snow.
Flower of the Day: 29.11.2017 Campanula
I had never seen them so tiny and white before, but always a pleasure to the eyes.
Photo Challenge: Serene
I had never seen them sleeping before. I took a walk along the River Aar in Switzerland, just along the path to where I live. It was early evening and there were two swans floating and sleeping on the river.
Daily Prompt: The Summer that never was
You want snippets, you can have them. Some were large snippets, others like snow flakes tumbling down and usually magnetically attracted to the windows if the blinds were up. The blinds were often closed because we were warned that our windows would be affected.
I was affected, Mr. Swiss was affected, our cat was affected. For almost 8 months we were under siege from a team of buiders, dedicated to improve our life style. They stripped our walls, transforming the original insulating material into snippets of rubbish. It was laying everywhere, the styrofoam of life. It was magnetic, but not attracted to metal, attracted to everything else. Our cat Tabby had a new coat of fur, with a fashionable pattern of white dots.
Was it all worth it? Now eight months later when the builders have disappeared, the gardiners have removed their machines and the big hut where they met for the coffee breaks, ate their sandwiches and discussed the further tortures of the inhabitants has also disappeared. This week, eight months later, it was hoisted onto a truck and is now on its way to annoy others. Of course, we got used to it. We got used to having a scaffolding in the front and back yard. We got used to the screeching of pneumatic chisels as they removed the snippets of plaster from our walls, only to be replaced with a new layer of styrofoam.
We greeted the workmen in the morning and said goodbye in the evening. It was a new life, but where was the summer. The days of sitting outside on the porch having lunch and enjoying the warmer weather. You could even lower the sunblind if it was too hot, but we no longer had a sun blind. We no longer had a table outside for lunch, it had been removed to the cellar and will remain there until next spring.
It is now finished. I said to Mr. Swiss this week “was it worth it”. We were in complete agreement, no it was not worth it. It was not worth losing a complete summer when you are golden oldies. You do not know how many summers you have left. We were under observation, we could no longer relax in our own home in the morning. Be sure to wear something respectable when eating breakfast in the kitchen, there might be a worker outside and there usually was.
It was a summer of our life, that never was. It disappeared behind a wall of noise, dust and dirt. And now, after taking 1,100 photos of the work progress, I am only left with the memories in my online photo album. One day, in the future years to come when I am no longer here, it might be decided to remove the building to make room for something better. I see it happening everywhere around me. We love our village, love the surroundings and even love our home, but a summer long we despaired if we would ever love it again.
It happens quicker than you think. Mr. Swiss once lived in this building in the fifties and today a new block of appartments has already reached the second floor on the building site.
Good Morning
No sunrise this morning, for the simple reason that it does not seem to have risen. Yesterday we had some snow, which mixed itself with rain, and eventually it was only rain. I was glad as the gardiner had refreshed my dead lawn with seeds. The weather is a bit too cold to propagate them into a fully grown lawn, but who knows. I was worried that the birds might attack the seeds, but they had no great interest. I think they were full from the birdhouse supplies. There was only a lonely blackbird digging around in the earth, but after she pulled a worm out, she disappeared with her trophy in her beak.
However this morning I saw something that looked like a yellow leaf on my avocado. When I took a closer look I realised that my new white amaryllis had opened a flower. I have never had a white one and it was something completely different.
Otherwise nothing exciting is happening in the life of the Angloswiss at the moment. I was going to the store yesterday to order my new iPhone X, but I was too lazy. It was raining and I had no inspiration to go into town. Mr. Swiss would have taken me, but he was also not so full of inspiration, so I postponed it to today. Mr. Swiss did mention that I have been talking about it for at least a month, so perhaps it would be a good idea to do it.
I noticed on my last visit to the supermarket they had a special sales campaign for Yamaha electric pianos. This was the grand piano version and it was even playing a tune. The had a few models there, and as I left the supermarket a young man was playing on one of the pianos, the white one in the background. I stood awhile and listened and he saw me, but I told him to carry on, I was enjoying the concert.
I noticed Rocket man had again launched a new missile in his collection, although he was assuring us that North Korea would used their nuclear weapons only to keep the peace in the region. What is the point in getting excited about it. Actually Kim Jong Un spent a very small part of his school days in Switzerland, although it has never been officially confirmed by the North Korean government. Kim Jong Un in Switzerland The North Korean government never confirm anything, unless it is a new bomb.
Due to the fact that I do not go places and see things, except for the supermarket, there is not much more to report. I will now move on to the exciting task of cleaning and getting ready for today’s exciting excursion to the store.
Have a good day everyone.
Flower of the Day: 28.11.2017 Orchid
I just love the secret little details of an orchid – almost like a triffid. I have the feeling if I touch the middle of the flower it will absorb me.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Letter O – Needs to have the letter O anywhere in the word
A wood pile
The roof in the supermarket
Window cleaning
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Letter O – Needs to have the letter O anywhere in the word
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 