Close ups

Apart from discussing the unfathomable mystery of why the Swiss only sell eggs in packs of ten and four instead of sixes and dozens or that their letter boxes are bright yellow instead of red and I seem to be the ONLY non-homeless person who ventures outside to walk their dog before brushing their hair or having a shower in the early morning I thought I'd add some pictures and see if you can guess what they are.

Besides, I'm waiting on a phone call from someone who had me recommended to them as a freelance 'tidier' up of ESL background report writings and seeing as nearly four months have rolled by without my bothering to find an answering machine it's best that I stay here for now.

Ready?

I'm pretty convinced that my Mum had a dress with these flowers on them in around 1974 and that when she got sick of it she cut it up and sewed some table napkins. However, here the flowers are the non-wearing, shy and forgotten variety.......

.... because they're wallflowers. Okay, I'll stop that now. Having a narrow workbench and a shelf means that we no longer have the hotplates as our sole space to cut veges and plate up and the cracks in the floor tiles means that if Milly's bored she can just flop out and lick them any time she likes. Canine chup-a-chup if you will.

Who knew that Switzerland's Lac Leman had such exotic sea anemone flourishing in the depths?

No-one, because our towels need to be taken out of our windowless, fan-less and vent-less bathroom and hung out by the bedroom window to dry long enough to stop the mouldy damp pong that leaves you filthier after drying yourself than before you had a shower. However we think it's October when the concierge flicks on the central heating and the towels can happily stay above their little radiator and the neighbours beyond the trees are treated to an unobscured glimpse of me getting dressed.

These little buggers look good but hurt like hell.....

.....when they drop the equivalent of seven storeys out of the oak trees that form Milly's part of the apartment gardens and land on my head! The pods have little spikes in them that grip my hair with a ferocity not before demonstrated to me by anything in the plant world. And dammit, these chestnuts are not the ones that you can eat.

Many's the time I've stared deep into these cracks....

....before hacking at it with a bread knife and stuffing it with gruyere and proscuitto. This Swiss/French version of a 'ham and cheese sanger' is about the cheapest food option there is, not to mention delicious. However, leave it longer than eight hours and the Pain Genevose is harder than the trunks of the trees that rain down those spiky chestnut pods.

Our house has the basics but desperate times call for a visit to the kiddie craft section of the supermarket.

Four tubes of acrylic paint, three canvases and a brush set later and my 'modern interpretation of gum leaves' was excreted out. Anything to adorn our enormous, empty white walls. They've been hidden behind the sofa for the last month because Love Chunks hasn't got around to hanging them up: presumably symbolising his subtle but understood opinion of my painting abilities.

Blue spots. If only the eye would stay on the blue spots....

....that feature on the pillowcases and NOT on the humungous brown-tinged smoked glass mirror that has been permanently stuck to the wall. We have set the bed up so that we don't scare ourselves with our own reflections and certainly don't want to spend even a tiny moment thinking about why the previous owner thought that installing such a big arse slab of glass was a tasteful idea.

Somehow, I have to convince these to stay as leaving is going to make things unpleasant over the coming months.

Milly's fur coat is convinced that an Australian summer is approaching and thus, every time she flaps her ears or I pat her, a cloud of loose orange hairs is puffed up into the air before adhering to something dark like our lounge or my trousers. Swiss winter will invariably result in a coat being bought which she will loathe. We live in hope of her intelligence that she'll soon understand the link between Walkies and Wee-wees and enduring a strap-on tartan back warmer.

These are everywhere in Geneva and despite their age, people still use them.

Fresh water drinking spouts are quite decorative and are perfectly safe for refilling bottles. Half of them are human or horse height and the others are directly on the ground, specifically for dogs. All except Milly who is inexplicably frightened of them.

Tiny little zig zag edges mean that it is safely sealed.....

.....until I next wander into the kitchen and wonder what chocolate I'm going to have with my coffee. I may not officially review chocolate any more, but I still buy it, eat it, love it.