"Ladies who Lunch" (and read)

That's a quote from somewhere. Vera thinks it's a TV program. Alice has just interrupted my blog composing, to say it's a song, from a musical. Know all!

Yesterday - Oh dear. This blog comes up with the wrong date and time, most irritating, and I've said I'm in the UK. Well, it's yesterday here.

YESTERDAY we went for lunch with a good friend, at a favourite restaurant of theirs. The menu was very enticing indeed.The two of them talked an awful lot. It's a wonder they managed to eat, even though they declared their selection of tapas was very tasty indeed. They talked about holidays: Vera's "Down South" (which you can read about earlier in this blog) and her friend's in Lanzarote. She had a lovely little book of photos her husband had made up and ordered online (what you can do with technology nowadays!) There were some particularly interesting ones of places designed by an artist and architect, César Manrique, including a house partly underground in the cavities made by long-ago volcanic activity.

They talked about books too (they both seem to read an incredible number of novels.)  They discussed The Bone People, by Keri Hulme, on which Vera had written up screeds of notes for her Book Group.

She thought it was brilliant, though very disturbing in parts, with lots of human relationship psychology stuff and symbolism about New Zealand culture. It won the prestigious Booker Prize, too. Then they discussed A S Byatt, whom they agree is a wonderful writer. She's good on human relationships, too. And truly inspired with her descriptive passages and meticulously researched historical detail. They both think The Children's Book (shortlisted for the Booker) is her best.

Finally, over the dessert (which Vera really should have refrained from: her "waist" isn't getting any smaller...) they did get round to talking about me.  I found that part of the day the most gratifying.

"Babysitting"

Vera took me with her when she went on this "babysitting" lark recently.

It meant travelling on one of these great yellow and blue buses.Vera mostly sat plugged into her iPod, playing her "Waves". They're just compilations like people used to do on tape casettes (remember them?) to dance along with. She was tapping her feet, jiggling her knees and sometimes (most embarassing) even flipping her hands about.

I sedately enjoyed the view. However, when we got to our destination, it turned out there weren't any babies as such, just a delightful little girl and boy who did all the usual stuff children do - viz being utterly charming and horribly annoying by turns. I recognised some of my own characteristics, I have to admit. That's probably why we all got on so well together. And there wasn't a lot of sitting, either. Not until after kids' bed-time. Exhausting. Although great fun.

Yes, I did succumb in the evening to watching an episode or two of that brilliant Game of Thrones (based on a series of books). No cardboard, clichéd characters there. Everyone is a fully rounded mixture of "good" and "bad". I took quite a liking to young Bran: he's a pretty deep one, more than meets the eye, I suspect. Just you wait and see if I'm not right. Frightfully (yes!) exciting all round, even if it was somewhat gory in places.

The next day, we went with the wee boy to collect his sister fom school. After the obligatory swings, slides and climbing frames in the Park, they asked for ice-creams. They had no trouble at all remembering the way to the shop... Their ice-lollies came in spiralling different colours. Vera forgot all her resolutions about dieting (she could do with a pound or two less round the middle) and had a frozen Mars. So many calories. I was hot and bothered too, so the little girl kindly gave me a lick of her Twizler? Twister? - whatever. 

On the way to the Bus Station, before finally going home, we stopped to buy a Big Issue (not only a very worthy cause, but usually a good read too) and paused beside this statue of a famous man.

 Then it was back on the bus again.

Altogether very satisfying trip.

I think I'll go the next time too.

P.S. Alice has been grumbling again, just behind my right ear, while I watch Vera struggle with placing the photos. It's most frustrating not having fingers! Alice says this post is very boring, and she is threatening to "tell all" (what can she mean?) if I don't tell you a bit more about her. Oh dear. . . . Next time - I promise, honest.

Harvieston

Yesterday we visited an eccentric friend who lives in this splendid-looking mansion.

However, it's been allowed to deteriorate into a very sorry state, and is now up for sale. The remaining tenants are hanging on in there, hoping someone will buy it soon and restore it to its former glory.
    Our friend stays in the bit sticking out onto the balcony. Beautiful when it's warm and sunny. Extremely bitter in winter. Brrrrr. Maybe that's why they seem to have a passion for bonfire parties in the nearby field. Too smokey for me. . .

Yesterday was actually sunny!

First time for ages. I'd almost forgotten what it feels like.

The pastoral view from up there is very soothing. I became quite contemplative, dozed a bit and and almost fell off. Luckily I'm built to withstand such impacts, but, my dears, the shock to the nervous system... It was bad enough just coming so close.

They had to let me have a nap to recover.

Ollie and Bear, who live downstaris by the side door, let me bunk in with them.

You can tell they're quite the intellectuals by the nature of their reading matter.

Our friend calls himself an "arthropodologist" (He means he's into insects.) As he imagines he's a re-incarnation of Alfred Russel Wallace (where do humans get these weird notions from?) he has called his study The Wallace Room. I believe he's even dressed up as Wallace in the past. He says that was for an educational project with schoolchildren. Oh yes?
   Still, I mustn't be mean. He kindly allowed me to look at a specimen through his microscope. It was just a bit tricky getting in position over a device designed for big people, but with my usual determination and agility, I finally managed. It was well worth the effort.
   Wow! See what I saw (below). Do click on this and view it in more detail. I found the quote on the Alfred Russel Wallace website - it sums up my own emotions precisely.

The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause.

(From Wallace's 1869 book "The Malay Archipelago")


Being a Monkey I solved the Puzzle of this Tree in the grounds.

["That's a pretty puerile sort of joke." Alice.]
["We are not amused." Vera.]

I choose to ignore such deprecating remarks while I'm dictating.

I shall have my own good memories, despite those two.
What a wondrous and exciting day it turned out to be!

Open ID

I've only just discovered what "Open ID" is, or means. You might need it to post Comments on here. Alice tried to post a Comment and got in a terrible muddle, which made her even more grumpy than she had been already. (She wanted me to stop talking about Vera all the time and give her some space, too.) Oh dear. In the end, I had to post it for her - which now looks kind of silly, since it's my blog.

To find out about it, go to openid.net, then follow the explanations and instructions. Fingers crossed - or paws, or fins, or whatever it is you are blessed with, my dears.

The promised photos.

(You really ought to read my second post, which is my first proper one, before you look at these.)
Don't forget that if you click on a photo, you get to see it  even bigger and more splendid! Vera says there are more still on SmugMug, and most of you would know about that. Search me...

The first one is of me in the Great Eastern Temple, in front of the Great Buddha of Nara, Japan, November 2007. Not a very good picture, really, but a memorable moment.

For more information on the place, see Sacred Destinations.

In 2007, and again in 2008, I went to Cortijo Romero, an alternative holiday centre in Spain.

 I thought it would be a bit much, all touchy-feely, full of hippies left-over from the 60s. But it was really super: ever so warm, lots of wonderful flowers in the garden, marvellous food, friendly people, interesting courses and activities. The humans did a lot of swimming in the pool (some of them in the nude!) or sunbathing. My constitution isn't very suited to the former recreation, but  I enjoyed the sun. This was the last day, packed and ready to go.

This is from our recent visit to Winchester. The famous cathedral is in the backgound. Good old Wikipedia can tell you quite a bit about it, though the editors have quibbled about citations and verifications. Who cares? And of course the C of E has a whole website dedicated to the place.

We also went to a splendid Open Studios Weekend at Project Workshops in Quarley, North West Hampshire.

This beautiful wolf sculpture (below) is by Amy Goodman. 

Wolves again. Synchronicity, as Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) would have said. Interesting bloke. He must have had a sense of humour, as he once said, "Thank God I am Jung and not Jungian".

   One of Vera's recent cinema trips was to see A Dangerous Method, all about him and Freud and a young woman called Sabina Spielrein. She started off pretty crazy, but ended up writing a so-called "seminal" paper, that didn't get the recognition it deserved (of course.) The Telegraph wrote an insightful review. Vera  said she was mainly interested in the history of  Psychology, but she did also have the treat of watching both Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender together in one film! Aragorn and the star of Shame... I thought she was quite over-excited for several days afterwards.

I am used to going to the supermarket when making visits to stay with friends. I help with the shopping by giving advice on menus, recipes, ingredients, and how to budget. Nevertheless, they still make some ridiculously extravagant purchases. Humans!

Animals have so much more intuition and good sense. 

This lovely little cat had a traumatic childhood (from which her current kind owner has rescued her) and is usually quite suspicious of strangers - so much so that she will hiss in a very threatening manner. But as you can see, she and I got on famously. I hope to visit her again when she's moved into the new flat for which her owner is currently negotiating. Vera gave it the thumbs up.

Here we go!  

Why a blog, you may ask? And why Vera's Monkey? 

Some of you may remember Vera, for her idiosyncratic contributions to the Comments on T-shirt Wars back in 2005. She really enjoyed that opportunuity to disseminate her wit and wisdom accross the web, and missed it when the competition finished. One of the T-shirt lads tried to persuade her to start her own blog, maybe as Granny Geek, writing reviews for the board gaming community. But that was his agenda.

She tells me she's been too busy, however, what with her U3A Book Group, Poetry Group, Shakespeare Reading Group etc. And that's not to mention going to weird esoteric films like Martha Marcy May Marlene or Once Upon a Time in Anatolia with her Film Appreciation Group. She's also been indulging in Game of Thrones, on the back of some-one else's Sky subscription - though she calls it "babysitting", would you believe the cheek of it? Then she does that wafting-about dance thingy as well - Five Rhythms or Movement Medicine they call it. Just an excuse for regressing to the days of "Music and Movement" she did at school.

Recently, too, she's been learning Python, so-called after Monty, although it's actually a programming language [Sigh... These humans...] in preparation for getting a Raspberry Pi. She's going to wait until she can get one with a nice trasparent box, and a pre-loaded SD card. She sits up far too late over her old desk-top, muttering "to if or to elif, that is the question". Crazy. But ever since the ZX81 she's been one for technology - especially computers.

You can see that so well from this photo of her in her prime. (Click on it to see it enlarged.) Funny, though, how she looks a bit like Grace Hopper, isn't it?

WHY this particular blog, I imagine you're still wondering, and why now?

Well, last week we went "down South". A typical human illogicality: there's no reason for "South" to be any more "down" or "up" than anywhere else, of course. It's a mere colloquial convention, and nothing to do with feet above sea level. She went to see some "Art" exhibitions. (Damien Hirst is a matter of opinion.) We met up with an old mutual friend of ours - the very one in fact who got Vera to adopt me when he went gallavanting off to the antipodes. He said then it was to do with Culture and Creativity, but being human, I'm sure Love came into it as well. (Forgive my presumption if you're reading this.) It turns out he didn't know how well travelled I've become myself since then.

I'll get Vera to put up some photos to show you - if this blogging (that's some kind of euphemism) doesn't take her too many hours. I don't think she's got the hang of it yet.

Later on, we related this information to another friend, who's very sensibly just moved away from the English capital - so expensive, so noisy, so terribly BIG! She's very intelligent and appreciates what I have to offer on the wideness of the web, and she said, "Monkey should have his own blog!"

So I finally persuaded Vera to set this up. I'm somewhat digitally disadvantaged, as you can see from my Profile, so she agreed to do the keyboard bit, as long as I told her what to say. She'll sneakily add stuff of her own, of course. She's already said "We must tell them that Tyrion and Arya are my favourite characters." OK, OK. GoT references yet again. Do you know, she even spent more than was sensible getting herself a Stick 'em with the pointy end T-shirt! Personally, I suspect she really fancies the actor who plays Jaime - the one with the long foreign name.

Alice (Vera's carer, you may recall) says it's Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Yes, I know Vera's old enough to be his mother, but then, you're never too old to dream, are you? I prefer the Dire Wolves myself: fellow creatures, even if they are very big and very fierce. They're so wild and strong and yet protective also. Alice likes wolves, too. She's even got a wolf paw tatooed on her wrist. Something Shamanic, I presume. I digress. But that's the joy of a blog, isn't it?

My first post

Watch this space...