As usual I feel much better for getting some moaning down on paper yesterday and obviously anyone with any pride would erase it as it does not reflect well on an objective, positive thinker like myself. But, as the blogging guide said, you must not write to please others or you will lose your original voice. All righty then.

It would be interesting to sit and write for the whole day from first getting up until going to bed. One's mood changes so often during that time and it is totally random when you have the chance to actually put something down. I could easily have written a perfectly cheerful piece yesterday if I had had time in the morning and the other one would never have been.

RIGHT. Some activity is called for. And some self-improvement. It is always annoying when self-improvement turns out to be transitory though. A year or so ago I started to learn Ancient Greek, just because I didn't know it and it seemed stupid not to. I only wanted to know a little bit - the alphabet and a vague chance of reading some simple inscriptions. I found the perfect book, ('Learn tneicnA keerG' by reteP esnoJ'), which takes you to that level and far beyond in twenty weeks and has a pronounciation tape, so that you will be easily understood if you are transported back in time. I stuck at it for about eight weeks and felt clever and scholarly and laughed lightly as I translated the Ancient Greek puns which littered the excercises. And then, for no reason, I stopped. And now I can remember NOTHING except the first half of the alphabet and then a gap and then omega. When I was tidying I found the book again and was re-inspired. I LOVE Ancient Greek, even if I do have to go back to the beginning and now I have the authentic Greek church candles from the catalogue and I could read A. Greek aloud with my perfect pronounciation by the light of them and maybe buy some Greek wine through the internet - cool.

And have perfect bare feet, which somehow goes with Greekness, although an ongoing task.

BUT ... I have the new Michel samohT 'learn Spanish with nil effort just by listening to these CDs for a few hours' course. And the dual language books and a couple of ravodomlA DVDs and my dusted off copy of 'Mallorcan yrekooC'. Aaargh! What shall I do? It obviously IS possible to learn two languages at once as we did that at school. It just seems rather unnecessary. But I can't choose so I will have to. My idea is to learn them on alternate weeks, giving the brain time to process each section of information fully. I will start tonight .... alpha, beta ........ (I also found an old Berl1tz Spanish CD from 1998 and was reminded that I am CERTAIN that the person saying the English translations on it is 'Giles' from yffuB. It doesn't give their names anywhere.)

Also I am going to finally make the ultimate herb garden and two massive herb books arrived from Amazon this week. I had a decent herb garden at the house in Norfolk with quite rare medicinal things as well as everything else but it was so easy there because of the drier climate and a huge and extensive garden centre only a couple of miles away. It is more 'challenging' here because of about a million tiny black slugs to the square foot ... and the rabbit... and the lack of garden centre. I would like the garden to be not twee or pretentiously historically accurate (as if) but still have a monkish air ... hmm... this seems unlikely. Also, I notice that these new books, ( akkeJ racivcM - the herb goddess), have got very nervous about medicinal herbs and are full of warnings and in fact lack of suggestions about which cures they could be used for. Instead leaning heavily towards tisane recipes. I think the most disappointing herb garden I have seen was the endlessly photographed and drooled over one at tsruhgnissiS. Which was dull and just not attractive. Strange.

Totally nothing to do with anything but I meant to mention it before. My three children were born relatively far apart and I have always been obsessed with them being friends and having stuff in common. So I sent them all to the same schools all the way through so they'd have shared memories of teachers etc. and did all I could to stop them feeling jealous or competitive. (On each one's birthday the other two both had one largish present of their choice, for example - only while they were small obviously). Anyway, they are pretty close, considering, and compared to most of their friends. The weekend after the younger two got back from Thailand they had arranged to go out in a big group with their older sister for the first time for ages. My son was keen to get his hair bleached beforehand so he would look extra gorgeous and shot out to the hairdresser early. Later, my older daughter came down wrapped in towels. She had decided to home-platinum her hair. We were just checking a strand for maximum whiteness when my middle daughter came through the front door - with platinum bleached hair. All of them had done it on the spur of the moment without saying anything to the others. They went out that night like some ludicrous Swedish pop group. But afterwards my older daughter said, 'I thought it would be really embarrassing but actually I kept looking at the other two and thinking, Yeah - my family, and it was really comforting and nice'. So I felt glad.
- posted by Iris @ 4/21/2004 09:25:00 PM comment