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cars, clouds, cooking, crones
Sunday, 30 September 2007 04:56 pmGawsh. There are blisters on the soles of my feet, burns on my fingers and a sort of aching exhaustion in every bone of my body. It must have been a major SCA event. Have been cooking, or performing associated heavy lifting, since Thursday lunchtime. Am dead. On the upside, it was a good event, and the Shire evinced a gratifying tendency to enthusiastically inhale the pear cheesecake. On the downside, I got back at lunchtime today and have been marking *7%%^#&%^ essays all afternoon. The deadness is not assisting.
Two random happinesses which have resulted from this particular excursion:
1. In the supermarket on Thursday, while standing meditatively in the vegetable aisle contemplating the theoretical quantity of baby marrow likely to be consumed by 27 people as one fifth of a second course, a little old lady, of the tiny, genteel, birdlike variety, all pearls, immaculate white hair, and high Edwardian necklines, accosted me politely.
"Does that say R19.99 per kilogram?" she asked sweetly, indicating the superbly overpriced tomatoes blushing on an adjacent shelf.
"Indeed it does," I confirmed, switching my attention momentarily away from marrows.
"Well, stuff them!" she chirped. Then she gave this marvellously wicked and conspiratorial giggle, like a well-behaved schoolgirl who's suddenly been offered alcohol and sex by the curate they've been crushing on, and toddled demurely away.
I think I want to be one of those when I grow up. Except the word will be considerably more Anglo-Saxon than "stuff".
2. I'd forgotten how much I loved driving on the open road. I was alone in the car (except for food and cooking paraphernalia), and she went like a bomb. The trip up was in heavyish rain, fog and darkness, which for some bizarre reason I really enjoyed. The trip back was on a beautiful day, through the lovely scenery around Sir Lowry's Pass. I passed three Mercedes, two big gas-guzzling 4x4s, and a truly irritating road-hogging dude in a BMW convertible. It's a fortunate thing my car doesn't go any faster, I suffer from an unregenerate urge to drive like a bat out of hell. But it was one of those fated, magical trips, where speed and scenery coalesce into this little moving bubble of happy being.
My dad has been a maddened falconer since early youth, and exhibits a worrying tendency while driving to crane his neck out the window to look for falcon nests on passing stretches of likely cliff. I have a sort of weird semi-inheritance of this trait, except I crane my neck while driving to look at particularly spectacular displays of clouds. On extreme occasions, I celebrate the freedom of driving alone by stopping the car to randomly photograph them. Then I blog the result.
Two random happinesses which have resulted from this particular excursion:
1. In the supermarket on Thursday, while standing meditatively in the vegetable aisle contemplating the theoretical quantity of baby marrow likely to be consumed by 27 people as one fifth of a second course, a little old lady, of the tiny, genteel, birdlike variety, all pearls, immaculate white hair, and high Edwardian necklines, accosted me politely.
"Does that say R19.99 per kilogram?" she asked sweetly, indicating the superbly overpriced tomatoes blushing on an adjacent shelf.
"Indeed it does," I confirmed, switching my attention momentarily away from marrows.
"Well, stuff them!" she chirped. Then she gave this marvellously wicked and conspiratorial giggle, like a well-behaved schoolgirl who's suddenly been offered alcohol and sex by the curate they've been crushing on, and toddled demurely away.
I think I want to be one of those when I grow up. Except the word will be considerably more Anglo-Saxon than "stuff".
2. I'd forgotten how much I loved driving on the open road. I was alone in the car (except for food and cooking paraphernalia), and she went like a bomb. The trip up was in heavyish rain, fog and darkness, which for some bizarre reason I really enjoyed. The trip back was on a beautiful day, through the lovely scenery around Sir Lowry's Pass. I passed three Mercedes, two big gas-guzzling 4x4s, and a truly irritating road-hogging dude in a BMW convertible. It's a fortunate thing my car doesn't go any faster, I suffer from an unregenerate urge to drive like a bat out of hell. But it was one of those fated, magical trips, where speed and scenery coalesce into this little moving bubble of happy being.
My dad has been a maddened falconer since early youth, and exhibits a worrying tendency while driving to crane his neck out the window to look for falcon nests on passing stretches of likely cliff. I have a sort of weird semi-inheritance of this trait, except I crane my neck while driving to look at particularly spectacular displays of clouds. On extreme occasions, I celebrate the freedom of driving alone by stopping the car to randomly photograph them. Then I blog the result.
