Slackarse Sunday Selection

....It's nearly 5pm here in Switzerland, so it's already Monday in Oz, but with a year of ideas and photos and learnings, my brain has instead decided to stay in Sleeping in on Sunday-mode and not do much in the area of work, words or creativity.

It's been a while, but I remember loving the Sunday Selections weekly meme that is hosted by the living legend that is 'River' over at Drifting Through Life. 

Her rules are very simple:-

1. Post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. Link back to River somewhere in your post3. Leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented: for example:    Elephant's Child    Keep working through it    Kit Conn

Here are my iPhone orphans:

A bathroom mirror from IKEA.  Purchased to let me keep my elderly eyes on any stray facial hair.  I only noticed that it was called 'frack' when I got home and thought it rather neatly summed up what my reaction is at seeing my face first thing every morning.

At Milly's Meadow (officially known as Parc de Trembley), we found this rather clean sofa plonked right in the middle of the beautifully manicured lawns one Sunday morning.  It may not have been my preferred style but it was eagerly leapt upon by Milly.  Having a sofa of her own plus a long walk meant that all she needed to complete the ecstasy trifecta was a few slices of bacon.

I've revealed the Jovial Douche shower gel, Douche Parking, the Chateau d'Ouchy and Vadge Fresh to you before, but why not have some extra brain cells for those clever comebacks in addition to minty fresh breath?

Other brand favourites include our current shower gel - Douche Sensations (although I get enough of those 'sensations' just driving Sapphire to school amongst the never-ending road works, impatient horn honkers and the French Suisse's allergy to using indicators); Grande Cracks (biscuits for cheese) and 'extra dick' pizza bases.....

Parking perpendicularly is a selfish annoyance in the communal garage under our apartment building as it prevents not only the car directly being blocked from getting out but also the car opposite, as the space is too narrow to back out from.  If this car wasn't so adorable, it might - just might - have had a bag of Milly's butt nuggets placed under the windscreen wipers.

Last summer, the building's residential owners committee decided to invest in a robot mower.  Shallow channels were dug, wires inserted and carefully defined paths laid out for the green machine.  All went swimmingly until autumn, when the beast simply could not recognise or cope with wet leaves.  To the mower's mind, they were flat stickers on the floor, but to the aggrieved concierge, they were nature's litter and an unbearable offence to all who lived there.

However, just before they retired the mower for the winter season, Milly entertained the neighbours at the eastern end of the building with her never-fail, highly outraged lunch time reaction:

Yes, I guess that this is cheating a little as it's a video and not a photo, but imagine this performance occurring Every. Single. Day.....

.....within a fortnight she had several retired couples deliberately timing their balcony sandwiches and cuppas so that they could be entertained by our insane little orange dog.

The mower is back in business again, and so is Milly's pursuit of it.

Sapphire and I went zip lining with our gregariously gorgeous friend Gianna and her nephew Malachy in a forest just near Nyon.  It was then that my suspicion that French Suisse concerns for Health and Safety were nowhere near as stringent as that in Australia or the UK were indeed confirmed. 

Call it the Gallic shrug, or perhaps the fact that Gianna and I were the only people older than fifteen years old participating, but clearly the wooden platforms at each end of the lines were merely serving suggestions and not rigorously tested or secured.

Then factor in my 72 kilogram frame (easily being the largest of the four of us), a downward wire and momentum building to a level that saw my cheeks flapping back like a beagle's ears and my bulky bod was smacked directly into the trunk of an ancient oak tree and swiftly flung halfway back up the wire and smacked back into the tree again. And again.  Despite this - and the inability to walk home later or lift my arms up higher than my shoulders - we had a hoot.

The Swiss love a referendum.  Some of the topics can be incredibly controversial and have serious ramifications, such as the recent 'aye' to restrict international immigration; but others can be rather flighty.

This poster is advocating a 'yes' vote for extending the hours of road houses.  Yes, they want petrol stations to be able to sell sausages and other hot foods for longer hours.  

Not to be outdone, an opposition party went straight for the lowest common denominator - sex.  As in make love; not a trip to the servo for a sarnie!

Sapphire and I visited the Musee Ariana which features a huge collection of porcelain in a beautiful 18th C mansion by the edge of Lac Leman.  Part of the attraction was that it was a nice walk from our apartment and it was free: two winners for Geneva.  Luckily, it was easy to while away a pleasant couple of hours there, but this little triple gold lion-legged sugar pot with what appeared to be a rogue bagpipe painted on it left us pretty confused.

I'll leave you with these final two photos. The first is of Love Chunks' Big silver Bad Boy barbecue that he had in Australia compared to the tray of charcoal he has now. Both do meat brilliantly well. 

.....although the chef has a fair bit to do with it!

To use the already-tired vocabulary favoured by football commentators

......what a year it has been!

Mistakes were made, arguments were held, travel was undertaken and spare cash spent, but as I sit back in the dusty spare room (currently holding a weeks’ worth of washing, two un-renovated 1950s armchairs and paperwork covered in Milly’s fur), some lessons have been learned.  Allow me to share my collected twelve months' worth of wisdom with you, dear reader.

Geographic location is everything. So is desperation.

I scored a terrific gig at – not sure if they should be mentioned or if rhyming words should be used, so we’ll play it safe – 'Bureauvision.'  I had dropped in my CV a month earlier and the lady who received it looked about as interested as a Kardashian not in front of a camera, but I only live one kilometre away.  Four weeks later, when the dust had settled on some redundancies and an additional staffer was forcibly ejected for completely misunderstanding what ‘work’ meant, I was called in.  Yes, I could be there by lunchtime; I could be there right now if they liked

Cheapness is seized.

With the car not even warm after the 1km drive, they asked for my hourly rate.  Not one for thinking quickly on my feet, I blurted out the one I use as an English tutor. This was accepted before I’d fully closed my mouth, so it was easy to figure out that a Swiss street sweeper with special needs rakes in more (and most of that from the gutters in the nightclub district).  Even so, I bet they didn't have as much fun as I did trying to publicise, coordinate and report on an awards ceremony that featured drunk Belgian comedians (yes, they do exist. Belgian comedians I mean, not drunks), a stage hogging Dutch host, a scene-stealing Aussie producer, Freddy Mercury fans, a modern interpretative dance routine during dessert and a huffy royal wrangler.  The gig is mine for this year too!

First impressions are usually right.  Second ones just confirm the first.

Lyon in France was visited again and still failed to give me the ‘oh wow’ reaction that everyone else seems to get.  Lingering smell of stale piss that seeps into your own clothes and lingers for a week? Check.  A run-down riverfront that is praised to the skies online but was a dusty obstacle course of bottles and beggars?  Check.   Overrated ‘gusto’ restaurants with 2074 price lists and 1974 decor? Check.  

Swiss cows aren’t happy; they’re deaf!

Those enormous bells that your least favourite Aunt brings you back from her big bus tour around Europe? Usually festooned with vomit-swirls of hand-painted edelweiss and alps?  Switzerland’s beloved bovines really do wear those brass bongers around their necks.  Even when casually standing in a field and doing nothing other than flicking away summer flies and considering which charming native flower to chew on next, the sound is a cacophonous chorus that renders ramblers strolling by temporarily deaf, let alone the poor creatures themselves.

Here’s proof:

Life is full of pricks.

In my case, it was time to try another method to persuade Mr Migraine to favour me less: acupuncture.  My GP referred me to his own acupuncturist; a German guy on the wrong side of town: next door to the soup kitchen and the car park entrance favoured by pick pockets counting their loot from the Plain Palais flea market.  My nerves were hidden by my immaturity: the doctor’s initials were PP.  Doctor PeePee... tee hee.  After sitting down and asking about my symptoms, how often, how long and where, I was asked to strip down to my knickers so that he could place his pins in parts of my body that included....  To be honest, I forgot where he stuck them; the tiny sensation of them being inserted was immediately forgotten and it was only when I sneezed and felt some wobble on my forehead and shoulders that I remembered.

Don't save your nice undies for date night.

My weekly sessions with Dr PeePee (see above) were making a significant difference.  Three weeks into a six-week schedule had shown only one sign of Mr Migraine and he was surprisingly easy to send packing.  In a now-familiar routine, I stripped off, lay on the bed and received my various pricks before being placed under a foil space blanket to keep warm.  Dr PeePee left the room and I decided to use the time to remember how to meditate..... WOO WOO WOO!

I sat up in shock; pins catching on the blanket and the ones on my ears pinching my hair. WOO WOO WOO!  The alarms were sounding all over the city.  Had it finally happened?  Was today the day that the rest of the warring world decided that Switzerland had been neutral for far too long and it was high time that they were forced to use their bomb shelters? 

WOO WOO WOO!  And here I was, alone, in nothing but knickers, studded with pins....!  

“Dr PeePee...?  DR PEEPEE????”   Sliding off the table with a partly-stuck on silver blanket and pins that waggled as I walked uncertainly towards the door to call out ‘Dr PeePee’ for the third time was not particularly comfortable, especially when some were at the top of my ankle that folded in a bit with each tentative step. “Dr PeePee...?!”

“It’s okay Madam Lockett,” he said, eventually squeaking up the passage in blue Crocs.  “Today is the day when all of the alarms have to be tested in Geneva.  It’s the law.”

My sigh of relief caused a pin in my neck to fall out.  “In that case, wouldn’t today would be the ideal time to bomb Geneva, as nobody would think it was anything except a drill, would they?”

Dr PeePee smiled.  “Well it’s a good thing that your clothes are within arm’s reach then, isn’t it?”

You can teach an old dog new tricks.

Steph’s friend Anne is a pharmacist by trade, but a dog trainer by passion.  As with alarm testing and cow bells, they take it very seriously here in Switzerland.  She was required to video lessons she’d undertaken with various dogs and needed to run a class with a young dog and an old dog.  Harley, at two, fulfilled the first criterion and Milly, at ten, amply provided the old. 

The aim was to get both dogs to walk left and round around four orange traffic cones, sticking closely to the sides of their owners and then sitting down at each end.  Harley was eager and up for it and walked alongside Steph willingly, but decided that manoeuvring through the cones was a waste of his time. 

Milly, on the other hand, followed my every move, left and right, onwards and upwards, sitting proudly on her backside (always careful to protect her arthritic back legs) at the end.  The same result was achieved over and over again, encouraging idle fantasies of Milly-n-me putting Pudsey and her human chick Ashleigh firmly into second place and snatching the half-million UK pound prize from under their noses.....  “Milly, you’re a natural at this,” Anne said, walking towards us, hands in her bum bag.  “Although if she eats any more of my treats her stomach’s in danger of dragging along the ground.

Hmmm, an old dog learning new tricks.  Could this old dog, in her forty sixth year, train for a marathon; her own stomach trailing dangerously close to the ground after years of Lindt inhalation?

Home made oysters

The angry red bloodshot splodge changes from one eye to the other in the matter of hours, reminding me that whilst Spring has sprung in Switzerland, I am allergic to all of it.

Hayfever never troubled me in Australia, except for the three years that nasal polyps blocked each and every sinus drainage point.  This occurred during the bad old workaholic days, and my team reckoned that they knew when I was in my office (not directly visible to them) because of the window-rattling, endlessly honking nose blows.  Managerial mucus, if you will.  Thankfully, surgery occurred, scraping the inside of my face clean and then feeling the sheer relief of being able to speak without the other person looking at me with pity and inevitably asking, "Do you have a cold?"

Here, however, I'm chalking it down to a different hemisphere, different time zone, different season and different flora (and possibly fauna. Who knows what those pesky woodpeckers and squirrels do up in the trees when we're not looking).  It still seems incredible to me that bulbs can emerge when covered in thick snow and ice only six weeks earlier and trees switch from bare to bursting with blossom when my back is turned for a mere moment.

Nasal spray and tablets do help slightly and are well-earned after my attempts to act out 'hayfever' to the non-English speaking girl at the chemist.  However my walk with Milly in the mornings still results in sneezing a dozen times in a row with the air suction generated then causing every third one to be punctuated by a robust fart, pushing and shoving my body around like a disoriented set of blonde bagpipes.  Three steps back and a big one forward, thanks to the butt trumpet fighting the good fight on behalf of my itchy throat, streaming eyes and torturously tickly nose.

Milly also sneezes more than usual, but hers occur out in front of our apartment door in the marble-lined foyer by the lift doors.  "Ah-yeeeee!  Ah-yeeeeee!  Ah-yeeeeee!" reverberates down the hallway, in direct contravention of the Swiss-enforced 'no unnecessary noise before 8am on weekdays' rule.  If either of our neighbours opened their door to complain, they'd be presented with Milly's first real stretch of the day - head resting on her front paws as the rump is lifted towards them to expose a pencil sharpener arse already dilated and ready to discharge a poo in the park.

Outside and soon unencumbered by excrement exertion, she's as happy as the unknown-but-obviously-always-joyous-and-oft-referred-to Larry, scooting madly between the rows of daffodils, her paws flicking dew drops up against her belly.

This time last year she scooted in the rows of daffs, mouth open like a mobile hungry hippo as she avidly devoured the yellow petals.  This year she's either forgotten the joys of wanton destruction or has outgrown the taste.  I dawdle along behind, pausing every now and then to honk into my hanky, rub the reddest eye and do an exaggerated swallow in order to ease my throat.

It's all worth it.

Seconds

Apart from a brand new kitchen tap that was installed last week to prevent the cupboard underneath from rotting away and contributing to the outdoor pool that is our balcony, our rented accommodation has been largely untouched and unrenovated since it was built in 1970.

Despite this, I've discovered from the occasional chat with other building dwellers that our place is the largest size they have.  Every third floor (second, fifth, eighth and eleventh levels) has one our size that stretches across the entire length and allows pretty decent views of the Saleve and Jura mountains from both sides. "Plus, you have a maids' door," Anne said to me.

A maid's door?

She's right.  Taking care to snap this photo with keys safely in my hand, I'd almost forgotten about our second door.  It's the one on the right - closest to the gorgeous matchy-matchy lift door. Nothing but the best of burnt seventies' brown sugar for our external furnishings.

"And don't forget what was constructed for the housekeeper inside," she said, pointing to the tiny room next to the guest toilet.  This windowless, power point-less room measures 1.5 by 2.5 metres.  

We use it as our indoor storage space. My two nanna carts, LC's and Sapphire's scooters, unused winter quilts, art supplies and a dodgy IKEA desk chair have been shoved there out of the way.  "Well, if you had a live-in housekeeper, that's where she would have to sleep."

No wonder Milly and I see so many nervous and tired-looking Philippino and Malaysian women entering the foyer as we're exiting for Milly's first whizzer of the day at 7:00am.  They all stop and greet Milly, who rushes up to greet them with a wildly wagging tail.  "I miss dogs," one said wistfully the other day. "My kids look after mine in Manila for me."

It seems that these days no-one has live-in domestics; or not that I'd noticed anyway.  Then again, Guillaime upstairs has a cleaner visit every single week day.  Considering that it's just him and his wife in their two bedroom/one bathroom apartment (ours is 3br/2 br), it's a genuine struggle to imagine just what kind of detailed tidying up is required so regularly.  From the hoovering, scraping and clanging sounds overhead, Guillaime's debris keeps her occupied for least three hours.  Is he a messy eater who then defecates on the floor?  Does the always-stunning Mrs G let everything hang out once the front door's closed behind her, grinding dropped blobs of her Chanel Double Perfection Lumiere foundation into the gaps in the parquetry...?   Are they against wardrobes and discard clothes like dead skin cells?  Are dishes frisbees?  If so, they keep pretty quiet when it's not anyone's birthday.....

Our 'Maids' Entry' door has been permanently locked ever since we moved in, and is usually hidden by a rack full of damp washing, a handful of doggy doo bags dangling from the handle and the three designated recycling containers lined up in a row.  Lotto win fantasies see this door get removed forever and a decent pantry installed instead.

If we were the type of people who had a maid, then she'd apparently only be given a key to the side door and this is what she'd be greeted with: laundry and kitchen.  After all, why look at the comfortable bedrooms or living areas (with spectacular views) unless you're in there to spruce, dust and polish?

"Our cleaner is very good," Guilliame once remarked to me as we shared the lift. "Only twenty five francs an hour."  Waiting for the internet to rev up to normal speed and upload these photos, my mathematics-averse brain struggled with a calculation.  That'd be three hours, at 75 francs a day, totalling 375 for the week.  The Aussie dollar and the Swiss franc are pretty close these days, so it was no small biccies he was shelling out for managing a tiny living space.  It's also, it has to be said, a lot more than I charge per hour for my writing gigs.

If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what the point of this entry is, apart from showing you how hideous our doors, floors and tiled walls are and that it might prove best not to visit Guillaime's place until after the cleaner's worked her magic.

Well, I was walking Milly in the Parc de Trembley this morning when I spied what initially looked like a rather cute scene.  Mum, dressed in a power suit with a sleek leather briefcase slung across her chest, was sharing a ride on a scooter with her toddler.  Bent nearly double, she was gripping the handlebars tight, calling out, "Wheee! Wheeeeee!", using one leg to propel them faster and faster forward.  The child was giggling with glee.  Sweet, right?

For the first few seconds, yes, until their companion was revealed, coming up behind, huffing and puffing to keep up the pace.  Dressed not in workout gear but a rather formal uniform was (presumably) the nanny, forced to run alongside until Mum had reached the enormous UIT building and handed her both the scooter and the child.

The nanny was not giggling with glee, and I sincerely hoped that she was at least paid enough to afford to live in a place of her own.

The chaos of chairs

Much like marriage, apartment living is a continual exercise in consideration and compromise.

We apparently have multi-storey living arrangements a far lot easier than the average Swiss person in that we have our own washing machine and therefore escape the dreaded laundry room timetable.  Friends on much higher salaries than ours are unable to go out on Monday nights because it is when their allotted two hours are given to use the washer and dryers.  The judges' decision is final and no further correspondence will be entered into, such is the difficulty in trying to nab a Saturday afternoon slot.  Someone has to die and have their next-of-kin tracked down, bribed and shagged to have any chance of being able to change the time you have been given.  (While we were in Spain, our house and dog-sitter said the highlight for her was being able to wash her clothes when she felt like it - such small pleasures)

For those of us with washing machines, life is relatively carefree as long as we don't use them before 8 am or after 9 pm and never on Sundays.  The Sunday restriction is regularly flouted by me - surely it's OK to do something other than stay utterly still and silent from, say, 10 am to 4 pm?  Doesn't that allow sufficient time for a sleep in or pre-work wind down? So far, no neighbour to the left, right, up or below has taken offence at my rest day rejection.

With our dog now fully embraced by our concierge, The Fratman, and able to leap into the lift doors and accompany elderly couples to their floor (and back down to me) with joy and safety, we figure that the block is pretty used to the noisy Australians who like to yell 'Tea is READY' instead of walk the fifteen metre dog leg to the bedroom area.

However, there is a big booger still dangling from the symbolic nostril that is upper-level etiquette: our balcony.

When it rains, the water simply gathers into small pools, eventually turning into one rather shallow swimming area when they join up.  The drain may be set in the far corner but the undulating slope of the tiles means that it rarely gets wet.  Instead, the water is eventually dried up by the sun or soaked up by my ugg boots; whatever happens first.

Unfortunately, it is not just worn woollen footwear and solar power that is removing the water - it is also seeping through the balcony and starting to stain the ceiling and upper walls of the apartment directly below us.  The neighbours (to be referred to as the Seventh Floor Fusspots from hereon) are understandably annoyed by this and have asked the land agent to contact the owner of our apartment to fix the problem.

With Swiss efficiency meaning that the plumber rings to apologise if he's going to be ten minutes late, I assumed that the balcony repair work would be relatively easy.

But no. In the past eight weeks, I've had no less than ten separate visits of men arriving with clipboards to
a) have a smoke and fling the butt over the edge of the flower boxes down into the garden that no human is allowed to enter;
b) point to the drainage hole and hold some intense discussions about it;
c) jump up and down on the tiles; and
d) tell me 'We fix. Later. Fratman will call you.'

TEN TIMES.  Unless they somehow scrape off a thick layer of cement and slope the entire balcony surface towards the drain or knock the entire edifice off and build a new one from scratch, it is not clear what quick job they can do to prevent the Seventh Floor Fusspots from continuing to complain.  Put in a blue pool liner perhaps?

Mrs Fusspot has usually been friendly to me whenever we've crossed paths by the mailboxes or in the lift, but the frustration of no action and her presumably still-ugly brown-stained walls are starting to fester beyond  annoyance at the owner and towards the renter.  Me, in other words.

Witnessing her pretending not to see me as she struggled into the four person lift with myself as the only other person present was a little too much, so I applied my cheery 'Hello' that often gets unfriendly dog walkers to respond when we pass by every single day.

She grunted.  I tried again. "Look, I'm sorry that there seems to be no improvement on the balcony for you.  I've had ten lots of men come up to look at it, but not one of them has returned to do anything.  Is there anything I can do to help it happen quicker for you?"

"Yes," she hissed, causing me to step back a little in surprise.  Even her drop pearl earrings were swinging erratically. "You can stop scraping your chairs on the floor."

"Oh, sorry.  We have those felt dot things on the bottom of the legs---"

"It's NOT ENOUGH. You scrape them all the time and we need you to stop."

We had arrived at her floor and she swept out to my, "Sure, I'll speak to my family about it...."

Arriving back upstairs, I realised that our six dining chairs are all on carpet.  An IKEA job that has soaked up a few of Milly's left-inside-too-long butt nuggets, an infinity of dropped bread crumbs and more spilled wine than what had remained in the glasses they were originally poured into.  The rug now had several extra layers that not only prevented the chairs from scraping, but also provided recording studio-quality sound-proofing and a large, aromatic area for the dog to ram her nose into for a lick and a sniff if the kitchen floor is too clean.

It was hard not to laugh.  If this complex was in Australia (say, Flemington), housing this many people it would be a madhouse of noise.  Two hundred residents would mean that simple Aussie-related maths would see at least two out-of-control parties, several domestic incidents, a visit from the ambos, stolen wheelie bins, hard rubbish put out seven months too early, hills hoists pulled over, cars being keyed and Eminem on level eleven during work hours.  And we'd be pretty accepting of all that....

I saw The Chair Scraping Shrew again the following day.  "Good morning Mrs Fusspot.  We've had a think about what you told us and realise that it's not us who are scraping the floors.  It must be people on either side or on the ninth floor, as we have carpet under our chairs."

She stopped unlocking her mailbox and gave me a skeptical look. "No, you are wrong, it is you.  You have chairs in your kitchen."

"No, we don't, actually.  Our kitchen has a fixed bench in it and no chairs."

The fact that I dared to question her statement and profess knowledge of my own kitchen still did not convince her.  She shook her head. "I think you are mistaken. Your kitchen chairs scrape all day."

All day....?  When I'm home, I'm usually in the study - with a different apartment underneath me - blobbed out in a rollerball office chair and never on the dining setting. I felt my mouth form into the universal sign of increased annoyance - the cat's arse pucker.  "Look, Mrs Fusspot, you're more than welcome to come on up and see for yourself."

"That won't be necessary. All you need to do is stop the scraping."

It was then that I decided forget about visiting the bootmaker's in Petit Saconnex.  Not because he doesn't do a good job in re-heeling my beloved black boots, but because I was going to ask him to apply a layer of special rubbery stuff that would stop the 'clop clop clop' sound of my brand new boots (black again, of course) when I walked across the parquetry floor boards not covered by rugs.

Sod her.  Milly's nails can get longer AND the double spin cycle will be selected on Sunday.

Area avoided often

I'm participating again in River's Sunday Selections event that invites bloggers everywhere to post up photos they haven't yet published, consider linking them with a theme and write something about them.

...this will help me get over the fact that Love Chunks, Sapphire and myself had a bog-ordinary Burger King meal at a roadside stop near Rolle, Switzerland that cost us Seventy Seven Francs.  That's fancy eatin' money!

On with the meme.

A bit after 8:00am on weekdays and weekends, Milly and I trot happily over to Parc de Trembley to stretch our collective total of six legs.  All furry, if I'm to be brutally honest.  It's a slab of land with a busy street that carves it into two segments, one considerably larger than the other.

We owe a lot to this humble park as it allows Milly to run free and keep her post-arthritic body in better shape than when she was first diagnosed with two irreparably wonky back legs over six years ago.  A sniff of a squirrel or the opportunity to snuffle around bench seats has resulted in a sleekly fit dog who can jump up into the back of the car with ease when she was completely unable do so in Melbourne.

With a paddling pool, ornate flower beds, ponds, ancient trees and friendly gardeners who know us and greet us, we both feel as though we know this little part of Geneva like the back of our hands/paws.

And yet there is one section that neither of us want to enter.  That's probably a good thing, because the sign outside this section already forbids entry to dogs:

The sign always leaves me feeling slightly offended on Milly's behalf as she should NOT be compared to disgusting urinators, vandals, noise polluters or litterers.

Then again, she's a beautiful and intelligent beast who hasn't shown the slightest interest in venturing into what I can only call - wait for it - brace yourselves - Pedo Playground.....

These creepy 'animals' are presumably meant to be cheery creatures intended to invite children to climb on them, play on them and generally enjoy themselves, but I have never ever seen a child - or adult - in there.  It seemed long past time to break the rules stipulated by the sign and have a whizz, sorry, take Milly in for a closer look.  She'd protect me if she had to, I'm sure.....

With a shaking dog so close to my legs that we tripped up several times, we tentatively approached this yellow abomination; a filthy chunk of butter with a tangible sense of unwholesomeness about it.  Made by a angry person with an old box and no artistic skills or is there a more sordid meaning behind the nubbin for a tail and the demonic blue ears?

Smile or not, the purple 'up yours' horns did not conjure up any innocent joys of childhood.

And these....?  A creepy looking camel and a half submerged pervy pincered crab? No way!

F-words aren't usually my go-to words, but what the phark is this pink thing??  A par-boiled testicle??





















Milly whined several times as I nervously snapped away.  If this was supposed to be a dog with antennae for ears, porn star breasts for eyes and nose and a distinctly un-PG tongue lolling out lustily, it was a challenge getting her to pose next to 'it'.....

It was a relief for both of us to get the hell out of there.  A-poo-behind-a-bush-relief for Milly, and a thank-god-we-have-wine comfort for me.

That is, until the label revealed that it too wasn't offering real comfort....

But dear old LC did.

Two meanings of 'tear'

"That's not what I meant and you know it!"

"Oh do I? So I have to be a mind reader now too....?"

Her only answer was to slam the car door shut and stride off. As I muttered, 'grumpy cow,' to the steering wheel there was little doubt that she was doing the same into her jacket.

Finishing off my coffee before going for a run, the computer is always a lure, asking me to check on it before sweating it out in the room next door. C's facebook status is brief. "Single again."  Love Chunks and I sigh in sympathy and disappointment.  C is a single mother who has literally been on her own for a decade working full time, paying off a mortgage and caring for a son with a unique set of challenges that the father refuses to see.  If anyone needs some pampering and romance, it is her.  We both write separate messages and sign them off with the usual ineffective wish to provide a hug or two via cyberspace and across the hemispheres.

Tara's status is much lengthier, a written message in response to my carelessly typed, "Are you okay?"  Not really.  Her partner is now refusing to take the medication needed to manage a significant mental health issue leaving Tara to deal with unpredictable rages, unaffordable spending sprees, unheard of debts suddenly coming to light, undeserved accusations and uncomfortable living arrangements.  

In the car, my phone vibrates. "I hope you are all well and enjoying the snow, but I have some really bad news that I need to tell you......"  Darling Dale, IT guru, laid-back buddy, volleyball queen and world traveller has been given the unenviable task of contacting all of J's university friends and telling us that cancer claimed her.  "But she wrote to me in January wondering if she should return to work full time or take it easy and pick up her painting again," is my tapped response, no time for refinement or spell check.

Back home, Love Chunks is now bent over his knees, clutching a blue esky ice block wrapped in a tea towel to his torn calf muscle. "Good thing I injured myself on the very last ski run of the day," he said, grimacing.

"I'll try the doctor again. Hopefully the receptionist answers this time because their message service is all in French."  Milly sighs loudly and smooshes her face against the side of her bed, signalling very clearly her disappointment at the rain that prevents us from going out for a walk.

Appointment made for 2:45pm, I make LC something to eat and tram it into the city to book our train tickets for Italy in the summer. "No, sorry. They won't accept bookings that are 120 days before the departure date.  Best come back on 11th April to get all your travel details sorted out."  I try not to peel the skin around my thumbnail but do it anyway, feeling the sting of exposed flesh and blood beginning to flow.  Accommodation is already becoming scarce for one of the world's most popular tourism destinations, but to take the chance of finding somewhere to sleep and then have no way of getting there on time.  The hem of my jacket is used to press against the nail and stem the bloodflow.... I smile and thank the ticket lady for her help.

Back at home, LC is on the phone to M, J's husband.  He told LC that J went downhill very rapidly before having a stroke and being placed into palliative care.  M was in turn both prepared for her death and completely unprepared.  She was only forty five, with three kids aged eighteen, sixteen and fourteen.  M once told me how they met. "I saw her across the room giving some other bloke a really good telling off. I thought to myself, 'that girl's got fire in her,' and went over to divert her attention." That was in 1986.

LC's eyes fill with tears after he farewells his old friend. We hug and I tell him of my small moment with Sapphire earlier this morning. He shows me his calf which is twice the size of his other one.

There's leftovers for lunch and the final episode of Derek.  I've already seen it with Sapphire and we both ended up sobbing.  The biggest message is the one that everyone - no matter what their faults - see and value in Derek, the assistant at a nursing home who has his own problems to deal with.  Kindness.  Just be kind, that's all.


















I send a text to Sapphire, apologising for my bad temper this morning.  Love Chunks gets a Kath-made coffee that nowhere near reaches his own standard of DeLonghi delight, but he's grateful for it anyway.  Milly skips when we take the lift downstairs and she sees the cleaning lady and rushes to greet her by giving her slippers a lick.  The sun has some warmth in it now and Milly is happy to sniff the green stems of the crocus flowers emerging from the mud.

After doing some laundry and mopping the floors, two hours is spent printing out a document for one of my students page by page, thanks to an ancient CD-rom format that is still the preferred study method at his school.  Sapphire arrives home from school, dashing past the study to get into her room.  "Thanks for the book, Mum!' she calls out cheerfully.  I sit at the desk, wondering whether to leave her alone as she's in her her haven; her fortress of solitude, or whether to barge on in and give her a hug.

Barging in won out.

French Fogey Finds

Regular readers of this blog (and I'm also including you, yes you, dear lurkers) will know that - call it what you will - flea marketing, second hand scrummaging or jolly brocanting - has been a new-found joy of mine since arriving in Switzerland.

A friend living in Choulex (pronounced 'Shoelace' but without the 'sss' at the end) let me know that a disused aged care home was selling off everything inside and outside the place. Would I like to go?  Look, who doesn't need gold plastic barbeque plates that include scallop servers?  That's right, no-one.

Sapphire and I were immediately struck by the age of the building which, (sorry, I forgot to photograph), was most likely over two or three hundred years old.  It was a classic several-storeyed Suisse-French farmhouse with thick stone-filled walls, solid, rough-hewn wooden beams and not one floor that was level or at right angles. Maybe that's why the place looked as though no-one had lived there for at least a decade.

It touched something in me to see boxes and boxes of seasonal decorations.  Baubles, baby trees, tinsel, Easter rabbits, 'golden anniversaire' trinkets, halloween pumpkins, candles and ..... mini carrots. I just had to have them. For what, I'm not sure yet, but Love Chunks fervently hopes that they and my golden croissant will soon end up somewhere he no longer has to clap his beady blues on them.

Boxes and boxes were filled with coat hangers, felt hats, cardigans and, saddest of all, dozens and dozens of empty photo frames. Did the staff empty them out when a guest departed in order to save space when handing over clothes and belongings to grieving relatives?

We were invited to look in every room of the house and noted that the walls, banisters and lift doors were all painted pink: was it a bold generalisation to assume that this particular aged care home catered for women only?  Names were still pasted on the doors with photos of each lady; clearly all long gone but hopefully peacefully so.  There was a lingering sense that it had been a decent place to live and work in.

Up on the top floor was a still-fairly-well equipped medical office and several rooms with hospital beds.  Further up the hall - and being careful to tread lightly as the floorboards were spongy and the beams were now forbiddingly low - we found ourselves in a beauty salon. "Oooh, I'd love this," Sapph exclaimed at seeing a double-seated, hair drying helmet on a stand in the best pale brown and cream plastic that the nineteen sixties had to offer.  Nearby were lockers with names neatly written on each and benches lined with  folded aprons, smocks, bottles of congealed nail polish and hairspray cans.

Board games, videos, books, paints and boules suggested that the ladies here were pretty happy.  Stacks of Villeroy and Boch dinner settings in a floral pattern, wine glasses, vases and much-used ovenproof creme brulee dishes indicated that the meals weren't too shabby either.

A vinyl suitcase from the 1970s revealed a barrel load of wool; worth hundreds of francs if purchased today.  It seemed an insult to take the pale violet, salmon and soft white mohair and cashmere balls, so the sturdier, plainer ones were selected to knit more blankets-for-the-homeless in front of the telly in order to prevent me from picking at the skin around my nails.  Another suitcase held the needles - how many hands had used them, and what had they created?

Kidney-shaped vomit bowls (I toyed, very briefly, with the idea of buying one and using it to serve up cashews to shocked dinner party guests but Sapphire talked me out of it), bed pans, shower gels for sensitive skin, walking sticks, wheel chairs, crutches, bandages and ointments a plenty with beige and rose-patterned chairs stacked up to the roof.  Streets ice-cream outdoor umbrellas jostled for space next to large framed photographs of seagulls and industrial-sized fridges that were being measured up and lugged away by fellas blocking the driveway with their truck.

We both loved this scarf that featured all the capital cities of all the Swiss cantons and bought another one that did a very good imitation of a green-themed Hermes classic.  The third was an Australian tea towel featuring the 2005 calendar. "I'll fold it in half and make it into a cushion," Sapphire said, her attention now distracted by something really unique. "Oh will you look at that......"

A duck lamp.  A duck lamp!   There were at least twenty of them stacked on a bookcase and my only regret is that I didn't buy them all and decide to set up a funky coffee house/second book shop with duck lamps on each table...... This one is now sitting (and works) next to Sapphire's bed.

I often remark that Sapph should have been growing up anywhere between the 1920s and 1960s because she adores finding retro treasures such as the travel clock pictured above, now proudly displayed in her room.  Therefore, when we found some pearls and the finest, softest navy blue leather gloves that fit her hands perfectly, she had to have them.

Milly had spent the afternoon at home with Love Chunks enjoying the sunshine streaming through the large living room window as he tried to watch the NAB cup on the laptop.

When we bustled in with a bulging Nanna cart and several bags, he patiently sat through our excited presentation of 'finds', nodding and saying 'aah' at (mostly) the right time before noting that we hadn't found anything for him.  "There was a zimmer frame that caught our eye, POG*** dearest, but don't worry, your next glass of wine will come with a clown-faced toothpick perching on the edge."

And, as per the Dog Code of Living With Humans Who Are Easily Amused, Milly too was forced to model the scarf:

...which she did keep on marginally longer than the bra 'ears' we forced her to wear a week or so ago.  All this loot for the grand total of fifteen francs!

*** POG - Pompous Old Git.  Applied only to Love Chunks and not the previous occupants of the aged care facility.