Sunday 29 July 2012

Thoughts in the middle of the night… the longest post I've ever written


Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and feel really good.  Take this morning for example.  At 12.30 I awoke and felt bright and breezy.  No body pains – well, unless you count some minor twinges caused by various injuries.  My head was fine – no migraine.  Not even a background headache.  And I felt as though I’d slept for a whole day. Sadly I only went to bed an hour and half ago but what the heck. Live in the moment Scriptor…

What do you mean the spellchecker rejected ‘Scriptor’.  Like how many times have I written that???  How many more times do I have to write it before the Spillchucker realises it’s my name??  OK, so I’ll press ‘Add to dictionary’ but I don’t see why the darn Spillchucker has to be so thick.  After all, it accepts Spillchucker.


 
Here’s a Columbine.  It was outside the Morven Gallery.  Isn’t it beautiful.  (In case you hadn’t noticed I’m only half concentrating on this post, the other half of me is sorting through some photos…)

I asked GB to stop the car here so I could photograph this harrow.  It’s not old but it’s attractive and somehow it reminds me of an old a style of agriculture.  I doubt there’s a combine harvester on the whole Island though I have seen a few rolls of baled hay in their plastic so I may be wrong there.  


 You can tell it’s the early hours of the morning by the degree of rambling…

It’s amazing where you find London buses!   


 This was in the Eorpie tea rooms on the northwest coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.   It is, of course, a small scale model sitting on a wiondow ledge. Turn right out of the tearoom door and you end up with only a few yards of machair and sand between you and America.  (And a few thousand miles of that wet stuff, of course.)  The Spillchucker rejects machair as well which probably means I should explain in detail what it is .  On the other hand I could just say it’s the flowery patch between peat and sea and point anyone who wants to know more to the relevant entry in The Goddess Wiki.  


Who would have believed ten years ago when Wiki was only a sparkle in her Dad’s eye that she would become a Goddess do quickly?  It has 22 million articles and can be accessed in 285 languages – that’s nearly half as many again as there are countries in the Olympics at the moment (204).  


In case you missed the parade at the Opening Ceremony this is who you missed seeing – in all their colour and beauty. If you watched the whole ceremony without even a loo break you are allowed to skip to the end of the list…

Afghanistan
Albania
Andorra
Antigua and Barbuda
Angola
Algeria
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Burundi
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bahrain
Botswana
Belarus
Brazil
British Virgin Islands
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Cambodia
Canada
Cayman Islands
Central Africa
Chad
Chile
China Republic
Chinese Taipei
Colombia
Comoros
Cape Verde
Congo
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Cote-d´lvoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Arab Rep. of Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
The Gambia
Germany
Ghana
Great Britain
Guinea-Bissau
Georgia
Greece
Grenada
Guam
Guatemala
Guinea
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Italy
Israel
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordon
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kenya
Korea people Republic
Korea Democratic People Republic
Kuwait
Laos
Latvia
Saint Lucia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Libya
Lichtenstein
Luxembourg
Rep. of Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Rep. of Moldova
Marshall Islands
Maldives
Malta
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Monaco
Montenegro
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Niger
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Palestine
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Rhodesia
Romania
Rwanda
Saint Lucia
St. Vincent & Gr.
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Samoa
American Samoa
Western Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Senegal
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Slovakia
Swaziland
Serbia
Singapore
Spain
Sudan
Surinam
Syria
Sweden
Switzerland
Tanzania
Tonga
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad & Tobago
Tajikistan
Timor-Leste
Turkmenistan
Tunisia
Turkey
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
Unified Team
United Arab Emirates
U.S.S.R.
U.S.A.
US Virgin Islands
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
 
 
In terms of lineage that has to be the longest post I’ve ever written.  I don’t know if the Unified Team (i.e. stateless people competing under the Olympic Flag) counts as a country (i.e. one of the 204) and I’m not counting how many countries there are above to check. 


 Just be grateful I didn’t show each country’s flag it would be Monday before you finished reading the post.  Of course, it may be Monday when you start in which case…


 {Photos unashamedly pinched from the web without any apology at all - 
this was too good a show not to share and remember for all time.}

You can tell it’s the early hours of the morning by the degree of rambling…  Did I already say that?

I’ve been at GB’s for three weeks and for the first time overnight I’ve seen more than a couple of stars.  I just went out for a cigarette between showers and there were a few dozen stars in one patch of sky.  I hope that clear patch spreads a bit for tomorrow and I’ll get a walk down to the shore again.  One aspect I like (and dislike) about the Outer Hebrides is how quickly the weather can change.  This year the weather has been even crazier than usual, as it has in most of Britain.

(And for anyone inclined to comment on my habit of going out for a smoke may I say what I said to someone I hardly knew who criticised it the other day – “You suffer chronic pain for thirty five years, chronic exhaustion for twenty five and then maybe (just maybe) you’ll begin to have the right to comment on my behaviour”.  Actually I don’t think I finished the sentence because she’d obviously already got the message.  She caught me at a bad moment!)

One thing I have enjoyed about the weather is that it hasn’t been too hot (or in the words of my brother – “Come off it - it’s freezing!”)  I just love it when it’s cool.  I’ve got one blogging friend suffering 82ºF (that’s only 28º in old money but I should point out her humidity is running at 92 %).  Another one in Nebraska has topped 102 ºF.  Even GB thinks that’s a bit warm. I would die. 

It’s a Grand Prix today.  And there are Olympics – though I’m really waiting for the athletics before getting excited. And GB has invited friends around for dinner.  And, most exciting of all, my e-mail server is working properly again after 9 days of playing silly buggers.  What I wasn’t anticipating when I restored it yesterday (by so much messing with it that I still don’t know exactly which bit of my twiddling solved the problem) was how many e-mails were going to pour into my inbox.  There’ll be a lot of writing to be done tomorrow today.

Have a nice day and keep smiling!   


 (I only put that in as an excuse for GB to say “Don’t tell me what kind of a day to have!”)

14 comments:

  1. Long or short, your posts are always interesting!

    I love the facial ornament of the girl at the end.

    I should send you an email so that I can help fill up your in-box.

    Am a bit tired, so I am feeling a bit frivolous too. Have a great day, or evening. And hope the good feelings last!

    xoxo Carol

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  2. Well, that is lengthy ;) I'm so glad to hear, for whatever time or amount of sleep you may have, that you've wakened with no pain...feeling refreshed. I pray the same for you after you drift off once again, and reawaken.

    I like that you asked GB to stop so that you could photograph the harrow. I did that once a few years ago, took a picture of a harrow - but, I didn't know that was the name for it. I knew what it did, though.

    By the way...I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE receiving your special post cards in my mail box. It always makes my day to find one. A special thing, so often neglected - a real...live...piece of mail without strings attached and full of care.

    {{thank you....so very much}}

    For every single kind word, thought you've thunk and time you've taken to touch my life, dear friend! You will never be forgotten by me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This was a long post, but not so long that my attention wavered. I used to smoke cigarettes and it was only after I quit that I developed chronic pain. (Oh, I just had a thought that maybe your reference to cigarettes is entirely different than mine) Anyhow, no judgement from me. You do have the right to do whatever makes you feel better and I do hope that you feel better.

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  4. There are few things better than a cigarette in the wee small hours.
    I enjoyed this ramble.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I won't disappoint you then: don't tell me what kind of a day to have.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I want one of those yellow saris!! They look so elegant and beautiful (but I'm afraid I'd look a tad ridiculous in one of them, so I better not get one, actually).
    As for the German team - who decided, and why, to have them dressed in pink and blue like giant babies?!

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  7. Enjoyed that post. You are always so thoughtful when you smoke - never in my house or car.Now that's my kind of smoker.

    How about temperatures of 114f? Kate was floating in the Dead Sea a couple of days ago. She said it was too hot and envied us our 14c!!! Hope you are still headache free my friend - we will see you tonight.

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  8. I loved your post and fully agree with you about the spell checker. It can't be right all the time, but we can add words to it. I am so glad you awoke feeling refreshed and pain free. That is indeed wonderful, but I think I misread something because I kept looking for a poem...

    Blessings.

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  9. Great post! I don't care about the Olympics, I am just enjoying how much fun you must have had typing all those names... or did you copy/paste them? 8-) As for being up in the wee hours, those are some of the best hours of all, I think. I'm just glad you were feeling fine as frog hair.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Copy and paste, copy and paste. Too lazy to type. Haven't seern a frog hair for absolutely ages!

      Delete
  10. If you had listed the countries in the order in which they appeared in the parade, then maybe - maybe - I would have been able to say approximately which ones I missed when taking a break to fix my midnight snack and cup of tea to keep me awake for the rest of the ceremony. Alphabetically, though, I haven't got a chance... I can only note that the world has changed since my school days!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's only your comment that has made me realise that the list isn't entirely in aslphabetical order.
      The parade of course had Greece first and Great Britain last and, I think, the order in between was by French name as the language of the IOC is French.

      "When I was a lad"(!) half the map semed to be pink - the colour in old British atlases for the British Empire! There has been a change or two since...

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  11. I must have been less awake than I felt as I did not have an impression of alphabetical order at all (LOL) This may have been enhanced by the Swedish commentators giving the names in Swedish. Makedonien (Macedonia) after Finland, and Tyskland (our name for Germany) in among the G's, for example. My excursion to the kitchen must have been somewhere between Latvia and Russia then!

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  12. I just love this rambling post!! That's how my thoughts go when I wake up in the middle of the night. It seems as though my brain works on warp speed then. Only I usually don't write it down. This is wonderful!! And how fun you posted a photo of the Germans walking the parade of nations. I'm still not sure about the pink and light blue outfits...

    Hope you are having a great day!!

    ReplyDelete

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