Sunday bloody Sunday

Yup. Reaping what I sowed. You may remember a weekend some time ago when I cleverly took my dishwasher apart to find a recalcitrant cherry pit jamming the works. And then I put everything together again and found this, up there. My screw has come back to bite me in the rear, since the poor dishwasher sounds as though it is possessed when it reaches the Rinse/Hold cycle. Back into its bowels I go. Maybe I'll buy a smaller wrench first. Grrr.

I'm tired of the Rinse/Hold cycle. I'd rather to go back to Light Wash.



The weekend's Holy Trinity: espresso, hot milk, hot flapjack. To be taken back to bed and eaten with the cat looking at me accusingly.

Johnny Cash singing: On a Sunday morning sidewalk, Lord I wish that I were stoned, 'cos there's something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone. And there's nothing short of dying that's half as lonesome as the sound of the sleeping city sidewalk, and a Sunday morning coming down.

It's the day for what ifs to sneak under the door and sniff around corners of the room.

And Monday means work, which is good, and a return to my seat in front of screen and postboard where Important Things are put, and a hopeful death to the what ifs.

Hm.

Funny thing happened. My intercom buzzed this morning. I pressed the Listen button, hopefully, really, because it hasn't worked for a while. There was neighing...I pressed the Enter button and could hear the door downstairs buzzing. Then a huge commotion and thundering as though the building were about to fall down, growing steadily nearer. The cat fled. Then the doorbell rang. I opened the door. There was horse, chestnut. He looked a lot like my old horse, Cromwell, and a little like the Forsyth Street police horse, Chivas. In his teeth, on a string handle, was a jar of apricot jam. I took it. It looked home made. He neighed again, turned around quite uncomfortably (the landing was not made for a horse), sat on his bottom, extended his forelegs, and shot down the stairs again, sounding like a reverse explosion. I hadn't even gathered my wits to give him a tip of loose sugar.

I was on my last bottle of spring apricot jam so I was really quite grateful. A possible explanation may or may not be found here; that horse landed in jail...but the story couldn't have ended there.

Horses who walk into bars have long faces.

Otherwise quite an uneventful Saturday. A pile of raw vegetables is clean and peeled, waiting to be dipped into bagna cauda, the delicious anchovy and garlic (yes, no vampires) and olive oil dip. It's right for the weather, which is Disgusting. Ugh. 90'F, 31'C, like a suffocating white blanket. Sauvignon blanc is chilling, Cassis is waiting.

And before that the purchase of the Very Important Things without which life would start squeaking rustily: kitty litter, cat pellets, dental floss and cottonwool wipes. And CHEESE: Reblochon and runny Brie and a baguette. Hmmm.

Things Inbetween

My fennel is flowering. (French translation in Comments, please? actually, I'll take all languages. I need to say My fennel is flowering in as many languages as possible. It could easily be the disarming icebreaker in a hostage scenario...)

Afrikaans: My anys blom.

This morning, early, on my terrace, feeling the air, which turned from super cool to super humid overnight. Strange. Then I packed up my basket and headed to Manhattan for the CBC shoot, complete with bottle of champagne and flutes for the crew. They were so proper they wouldn't have any. I was already on West 17th Street when I did a Homer Simpson, Doh! realizing I'd left my garment bag with super-nice dresses in it at home. Fortunately I was wearing what I think of as my blog dress, for quick change purpose, so it was fine for the champagne-sipping sequence that they set up. Fake sipping. Sigh.

Funny, how, isolated, this picture conjures up nightmare.

But it was one of MANY jets that followed an approach path to La Guardia that was much lower than usual and also smack over the apartment... I kept rushing out to look at them. I think they are beautiful, movingly so. But this is also to demonstrate why I have a new camera (still in its box and uninspected). The smudge. Can't fix it. I discovered it first last year in the Northern Cape in anotherwise pristine sky. So I must retire the little Canon Powershot SD500. It seems such a waste. But I can't have smudges in the blue. I'm quite attached it it. I understand better how Marijke felt when her camera died.

Oh, and if you're wondering where the photos of the shoot are: I whipped out my little camera, pointed it at the crew, whose producer was wearing an orange shirt, and switched it on. Nothing. Black. Um. The battery was at home, plugged in and happily eating electricity.

Eeeediot! [how did the BlackCat get in here??]

Marita

My mom sent me news that we had been expecting, this morning. Our friend Marita Swanepoel died this morning, at home in Cape Town, having refused anymore chemo for her leukemia.

It bears repeating that she first planted the garden designing seed in me, a long time ago, when I was still only about twelve. I was side-tracked by other things, and it has been circuitous journey to where I am now, but I am here, and quite recently she took a great deal of informed interest in what I was doing, after we had been out of touch for many years. I was very flattered and gratified (and surprised) by her attention and admiration. She was an iconic sort of person: very cultured, very striking, an artist whose aesthetic vision was evident in her home, her work, her appearance; uncompromising, clean, warm, bold.

My mom said in her email to me that Marita and I were kindred spirits in a way, and if that is true, I take it as a great compliment.

I would very much have liked to have said goodbye. Or even just hello, one more time. Our love to Ian, and Pierre, and Lisa.

Izumi, Phu and the Ginger Ale Pig

This was last Thanksgiving, at Eric and Mimi's...this is Phu, Mimi's brother. It has become a tradition that if we have Thanksgiving together, I make a ginger ale pig. Phu gets quite excited about this.

I owe Phu a favour: I called Izumi today - Izumi, petite Japanese hairdresser with bat tattooed on her neck, who runs a secret salon in the East Village, reached by word of mouth. Eric and Mimi were the word, and that's how I know Izumi.

I have a Hair Situation and TV shoot in quick order, and the two are not compatible. I had taken advice, considered it from all angles, weighed the consequences and I still hated it.

So I phoned Izumi in desperation today to see if she could do some repair work before Friday and she's said, "Noooo, so sorry, I'm all booked...but Phu has a 1pm..." and a little giggle! Ha! I email Phu and everyone he knows to see if he'll swap with me, and take a Friday appointment. Rashly, I dangle a ginger ale pig in front him.

Sure, he replies just now, You can have my 1pm, but it'll cost two pigs.

Two pigs it is. Anything to avoid the being the Fluffbomb. My Canadian viewing audience is extremely important to me.

Lost without Space

A day with very spotty and sometimes non-existent cyberconnections has left me really thinking about how it has become part of my life, and the lives of people I love. Every week, at least, my mails cross the Atlantic, fly south across Africa, and land in Cape Town , in a lightly wooded suburb on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain. They are read in a small room which serves as a study, and my words pop up on a screen read by my mother. And her words wing their way north, and west, as they have for so many years. I know an energy must be created by all this connecting. So much is positive, so much of it must be destructive. The humming, minute to our ears, must add to the vibration of our planet and send into space the message that we are a talking place... the ones who must pass things back and forth. Who must share. Because our whole globe, from a distance, is glowing with the evidence of it.

To know, now, that I can touch a key on my laptop in New York and become instantly connected with a human who until that moment is a perfect and invisible stranger, to know that that strangeness can be dispelled by an epic, consecutive exchange of, well, everything, because of a happenstance series of cybertravels, is to know that the Internet is a marvellous thing.

You really can Google the person you want.

And finally

WOW! I just opened my new HWandV copy of Elle Decoration and found this kitchen...I think it's stunning. The owner "is not a keen cook" so the kitchen was shrunk. It is such a silly premise, though...In this case (the case of kitchens, I mean) smaller is better - you can reach everything. Or why do restaurant kitchens have galleys??? I hate doing laps to fetch things I need. These massive sprawls you see in a lot of magazines really are for people who don't cook. Or am I biased because I live in a moustrap where the cheese-space is, er, limited? Anyway, I thought this, especially for orange-lovers, was gorgeous. It's by Brazilian architects Triptyque (3 Frenchmen, 1 Brazilian woman. Lucky lady).