Just checking that anyone Irish reading this understands that I not only have several Irish friends but also at one time considered MARRYING someone gorgeous and Irish. So if life had gone differently I would probably be writing little snide comments about English people by now. Anyway, everyone over here does it - trust me.

As part of the long haul back to some semblance of my old personality after many, many years of selfless motherhood, I decided to make more effort with the 'making sure that the small everyday objects around you are beautiful' school of thought. Every morning, instantly, I have strong coffee from a huge, white and very ordinary breakfast cup. (Which I found to my horror holds ONE PINT - no wonder I can type super fast at this time of day.) So yesterday, in the post, came an expensive, almost one-off, hand made breakfast cup and ... saucer! (I haven't seen one of those for years) in an evocative shade of Mediterranean blue. This morning I went down and made the coffee and turned to pick up the new blue cup. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a sad, white object; well-washed and 'put away'. Oh Noooo .... you poor, faithful old thing ... we have been through so much together. I picked him, I mean it, up and filled it with coffee as usual. The blue one will be used only in the afternoons, for tea - well it has got a saucer after all. The moving on from the ' motherhood' thing is obviously going to take more work than I thought.

I had an odd dream recently - don't leave the room, it is quite short. I was walking along a street in ohoS, where the roads are very narrow and the pavements only wide enough for one person. And saw that this street was being used as a 'burning tahg' so that every few yards there was the horrible remains of a body surrounded by ash, abandoned, or one actually on fire being tended by someone in a turban, so that I had to step out into the road to get past. It was very realistic in that it was a grey, dreary day and the 'tenders' looked bored and depressed and I was thinking, 'This really seems a bit unsuitable. Surely it is taking the acceptance of foreign religious customs too far'. But at the same time I felt prepared to put up with it and certainly wasn't going to complain.

It seemed to be based on my daughter's descriptions of the real ones in India and how the bodies aren't burnt very well at all and tourists are always nastily surprised. And a documentary I was watching about the singer whose body was stolen by his friend and burnt in the Arizona desert (I think). They have just made a film romanticising this which I would quite like to see as I now feel armed with the true 'facts' - it was a good documentary. As apparently the friend did a rather sloppy job and just threw petrol over the body, fairly near the side of the road, and didn't realise quite how much you would need to turn a person into a neat pile of ash. Anyway, it is quite annoying to have dreams like that some time after the information has entered your brain. What happened to all the sweet, cute things that I have seen and read lately - rise to the surface, dammit.
- posted by Iris @ 4/24/2004 09:49:00 AM comment