IT IS CHRISTMAS_THEY ARE HERE AT LAST

She is usually blond,though occasionally brunette and more recently- in this new era of tolerance-of mixed race. She is attractive but not sexy, modest, intelligent,sensitive and overbrimingly kind.
She dresses well  but is not glaringly fashionable. Above all she has a beautiful smile and sparkling white teeth. Sometimes she is royal but usually she is an ordinary young woman in an ordinary occupation.
He, on the other hand, is usually royal, dashingly handsome,desired by all ambitious women, has great potential,but is usually modest in manner. He dresses in traditional clothes,looks wonderful in a tuxedo and even better in casual attire, especially when wearing blue jeans which emphasize his long limbs. He is ,of course, tall. His teeth are also perfect and white- A true prince in shiny armor.

The location is traditional-sometimes in a city-New York comes to mind-sometimes in a quaint village or rural countryside but always in America. The Royal prince or princess is always situated  in central Europe. The kingdom is small,quaint and has a name that is difficult to pronounce.
The general features to be expected are ; Santa Claus; sleigh rides with big horses; lots of snow, bells, pianos for Christmas caroling  and orphans to sing the carols. Christmas trees and Christmas carols are de rigor.  There is always a predictable romance- with invariably a brisk and flirty snow ball fight between the two protagonists.
What am I talking about?  The yearly Christmas stories of course! These are featured on T.V. at this time.  From mid November until Christmas Eve-those wonderful fantasies are churned out to get us into the Christmas spirit of giving and receiving.
 I could ,like most people,deny watching Christmas movies  but I confess I enjoy them. It is only mid December and already my  over indulgence in Christmas schmaltz can be seen. I have a perpetual smirky smile on my face and a blurry glaze to my eyes from drinking  in all this beautiful red and green sparkling bedazzlement.  My body and especially my lower back is stiff from sitting for long hours in the recliner while watching T.V. Christmas movies  and I have started to gain weight due to inactivity.  I have even missed most of my exercise classes.
Do I feel guilty? Not at all-not until I have reached a surfeit of  these  Christmas movies because I know that by December 24th it all abruptly stops and there won't be any more snow, bells, carols, princes and princesses and pretty young women,handsome men with white teeth or Christmas ornaments and sentiment and schmaltz again until November 2020.
Am I alone in this? I don't think so otherwise these movies would not be made. They are necessary  nostalgically to satisfy our need to return to our childhood-to return to the excitement of unrealistic expectations; the snow falling dreamily in the landscape; the  Christmas colours of red and green ;the the baked goods;  the sparkling decorations the carols -so politically incorrect at this time; the wrapped presents and of course the magic of romance, especially of princesses and princes, are  essential to us in our present time of rational practicality and sanity. All this is part of the package of Christmas -that wonderful holiday that brightens the darkest bleakest part of the year for us.
 So I indulge in this romantic insanity and revel in it.
Too soon Christmas will be over, we will again feel flat because none of our expectations for Christmas were really met and we get set to face the harsh life of reality in 2020.  There will be vast opportunity to think rationally after Christmas so take my advice, forget good taste,high quality intellectual stimulation,and correctness and get your required "fix" of Christmas B movies.
Have a  Happy Holiday.

HAPPINESS WHEN ON A JOURNEY

Happiness when on a journey depends on taking the right books to read. I have just  returned back with my family from a trip to Greece to see my  son who is living there and the journey was a success.We traveled there via Dublin which is the shortest air flight to Greece from Vancouver.  The first thing I do when purchasing my ticket is to plan my reading material which is essential for my peace of mind on a trip .On our flight to Dublin, Ireland, I read the September Vogue magazine. As all fashionistas know, the September Vogue is a huge tome of fantasy,outrageous fashion and unadulterated consumerism. As I had not flown in a long while, was nervous and not a confident airline passenger, being a white knuckled flyer, this was the only reading material I could concentrate on.  This material lasted me for the whole eight hour flight and I was content.

Once settled in Dublin I switched to a favourite of mine -a second hand yellowing penguin detective story by Nicholas Freeling I have owned for years.  This features the eccentric  Dutch detective  Van Der Val. His stories are rich delightful, funny and dark. He is married to a French bourgeois woman  who amuses me with her caustic sense of humour. She is a delightful woman who is also a good cook.  This story revolves around corruption in Northern Holland and Germany.  It has a European flavour with wonderful descriptions of the depressing northern cold countryside,wonderful descriptions of great and unusually named Dutch and German dishes,wonderful meals with wonderful bottles of wine, exciting and interesting conversation. This novel was just right for me to get into the mood for European culture and helped me to embrace it's accelerating environment.

I brought another book  for the next lap of the  journey to Greece. 'My Brilliant Friend' is a current best seller by the brilliant Italian author, Elena Ferrante. This book was set in Naples, Italy, during the deprived era of the immediate post war years 1950 and 1960.  The book revolves around two little girls growing up in one of the poorer areas of  Naples  It is a rich and intense novel and I recommend it wholeheartedly -but it was not for Greece.
It had seemed perfect for Greece because it also is in crises and poverty. However when we finally  reached our final destination,Naphpactos, a provincial town in rural Greece, I found it did not suit and laid it aside. It had too much of an Italian flavour.

. Naphpactos is a port rich in history with a walled castle surrounded by wild mountains teeming -in my imagination- with  unbelievable magical mythical creatures. My mood in this exciting atmosphere demanded a good read and I was bookless. We were visiting my son and his family who live there and he asked me if I needed reading material,checked in his storage place  and handed me a novel -redolent with a musty smell -"The Dark Labyrinth" by Lawrence Durrell an English author who had lived in Greece years ago. I accepted eagerly even though I had read it years ago. It was perfect.
The theme of the book was a fantasy,dark, very Greek,very mythical,very satisfying as only Lawrence could write. I settled myself on the balcony surrounded by Mediterranean flowers, Mediterranean sunshine, Mediterranean blue sea, Mediterranean light, musical Greek voices and raucous traffic noises and immersed myself in a modern mythical tale. It was about tourists who agree to tour a newly discovered ancient site situated in a remote cave in the mountains of Crete. The cave, a labyrinth, was famous-as all the locals knew-because it harbours a monster. The typical prosaic tourists innocently embark on this dark journey. This is a glorious spin on ordinary people in extraordinary happenings with all vast Greek layers ranging from sparkling light to deepest dark. I hugged this book and journeyed with Lawrence through this  great Greek experience during the whole three weeks I was in Greece and it was satisfying.
For the trip home,my grandson who was traveling with us gave me "The grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. The book had not satisfied him in Greece. However it was perfect for the trip home for me.  It reminded me that I was moving back again towards the troubled times I had left behind  in North America-both the United States and Canada.
John Steinbeck is a glorious writer -with beautiful prose-echoing the fine prose of my favourite author -Jane Austin. He wrote finely crafted sentences with great sensitivity even though the subject was painful. I was very impressed and wondered why I had never read this monumental work before.His vivid reporting of the treatment of the  displaced migrants moving to California during the dust bowl era of the thirties reminded me of the status today of the displaced  refugees all over the world. and I found myself saying "We haven't come a very long way after all, baby."

I thought hard about this on the long flight home and about the ability  we humans have to make the same mistakes over and over.
I arrived home just in time and in a fervent mood to practice my right to vote.
 As you can see,dear readers,it is essential to select the right book as also the right clothes-another topic-for each country you go to.

BLOGG # THE WALL - OR -THE LOST CROCUS

It is the end of the first month of 2019; it is the heart of deepest winter,we are all prepared for the challenge of surviving it and yet we are nonplussed by the temperature of January -not knowing what to wear-discarding our heavy outerwear. It appears that spring has arrived early in Victoria.  Instead of snow, rain, or sleet we are experiencing  warm weather and hot sun. We are not the only ones confused-so is nature and the early spring flowers are raising their heads to the hot sun.
This means -for me- time to scout my favourite sites for  the early  snowdrops and crocuses.

As you may remember , my favourite site had been the rambling wall by the kindergarten adjacent to the local church. This wall had been destroyed and the kindergarten torn down for development. Last year my spring blogg was about the survival of the crocus in-spite of all the upheaval. In fact they had multiplied and I marveled at the endurance of nature as the crocuses  pushed their way around  the heavy construction site.

I haven't visited this site for the past year as I found it too distressing to watch this massive destruction of a lovely place, but last week I decided to walk down the lane and check it out. The homely little lane had been covered in brick layout beautifully designed, very tasteful and spotlessly clean. There was no way a random weed would dare present itself- anyway there wasn't a crack allowed  to mar this perfect surface.
I walked down this pristine lane and unto the street and was faced with  three new big ultra modern homes with "for sale" signs.  The homes were perfect examples of modern architecture with perfect handkerchief sized gardens, a minuscule lawn and each with two miniature trees in pots with perfectly trimmed round  foliage. The small area that was not covered in perfect  tarmac was covered in ground coverage that had waxlike leaves and subfusc colouring.  Nothing could have been chosen that was more artificial than that ground covering and nature definitely did not create either the trees or the turf-like grass. There was no room for a crocus anywhere.
As I looked at this new development I found myself asking three questions.
These houses were on a quiet street close to shopping areas, schools and parks. The whole development area was huge and could have been perfect to build low cost housing units for low income families. It is well known there is a lack of low cost housing in Victoria.
The next question is why did the church not take this opportunity to use this excess property to  help the impoverished? Or did they use the famous biblical quote " the poor are always with us" as excuse? Or did the lure of expensive real estate cloud their judgement?  Or another question-there are more than three questions after all- are churches still exempt from property taxes?
The next question was-What happened to the kindergarten and where are the children?  At this point I heard childish laughter and saw the wall.  Peeking through the a gap in the wall I saw several children playing in a small sandpit, several on a small swing and several playing on the ground -there was no grass.  The playground was narrow with the garage of one house serving as  a protective wall and the church wall as the other-a rather forbidding place. There was a fine plaque on the wall stating this tiny piece of land was dedicated to the children by the company building this development.
My last burning question was-:where are the crocuses?  there were none.

WHAT HAPPENNED WHILE RIDING THE BUS ON NEW YEAR EVE 2018

The day before New Year Eve I decided to celebrate by going to the cinema to see "Mary Poppins Returns"  I had promised myself this treat and I always honour my promises -especially the 'treat ones". I decided to go by bus rather than by car to avoid holiday traffic which is quite challenging  as the bus takes almost an hour to get there. However, the bus is heated, Victoria is a beautiful city, it was festive and so were most of the passengers. I got a great seat near the front so I could watch everything and everyone and  settled down comfortably to enjoy it all.

One of the first passengers to get on were a couple-they were young -perhaps in their twenties. They were unremarkable, neither beautiful nor unattractive, neither fashionably dressed nor shabby-an ordinary couple. They did not sit down but instead stood hanging unto the pole near the driver and in perfect view for me to watch. At first I watched idly as I did others but suddenly my attention sharpened.   She was dressed in the usual uniform of a young women ; black tights, flat shoes, no socks , a loose casual black jacket. Her hair was in the current top knot with a few strands escaping. Her features were regular and pleasant, rather plain and she wore little make-up and she was obviously on her way home after a busy day carrying a grocery bag for dinner.
The young man was also in the uniform of the current young man;very understated, wearing a close fitting jacket and jeans. He was slight in build with a narrow bearded face.  He was not handsome but  as he leaned casually against the window you could see he had a nice trim body- In short they were two ordinary nice  young people.

Why am I describing these very ordinary people so completely? Why was I even focusing on this very ordinary couple? I asked myself this too- then I started to recognize why.  This couple was actually extraordinary. They were communicating -I could see that. They were not flirting,they were not on cellphones but they were smiling and also  conversing. They were not shutting out everything around them, self involved, but were conversing . And it occurred to me one rarely sees this- people conversing and being absorbed in each other and still aware of their surroundings and I could see they were obviously in love. I will try to describe why. She-much shorter - would be looking up at him and saying something. He would be looking down at her, his eyes following her mouth as she talked, smiling slightly, nodding. Then he would  reply still smiling as she looked up watching his eyes and closely following his words, then they would be silent a few minutes; he would readjust his grip on the pole she would look out the window for a few minutes then  they  would continue talking - either one or the other saying one thing and the other listening with a slight smile nodding in agreement and  pleasure, very attentive,sometimes serious but not tense. It was a pleasure to watch them.
 They did not act like lovers but I knew they were just by noticing how they leaned into each other and  were really seeing each other with caressing eyes as they talked.  It was a loving dialogue between two people.
While I watched I imagined what they were talking about.  Was she describing something that happened at work?  Were they discussing some issues of a good friend who was in difficulty? Maybe how their plans for decorating the kitchen was working out? On the whole the conversations were gentle so it wouldn't be about decorating as they were always in nodding  agreement. No, not decorating. I decided they were discussing some mutual friends and what they were going to buy for their dinner.
 So why was I so interested in this couple? Was it so unusual to see two people having extended conversations ? Yes it is. I often watch couples interacting-on buses, in coffee shops- Quite often there is silence  boredom and even hostility but no obvious understanding. Quite often one person is monopolizing the conversation -I am guilty of that myself but rarely is there loving conversation or even flirting.  I do not include the current popular public interacting method -the cell phone of course as means of communicating.

I watched this couple somewhat idly for the next half hour as they gently and confidently interacted and realized  I was lucky.  What a nice New Year gift! -to witness and celebrate the gift of understanding loving communication on New Year Eve= If we have to make a resolution let's take this loving ordinary couple as an example and resolve to practice loving understanding communication in 2019.   Lord knows we need that!
The couple left the bus after another half hour cheerfully thanking the bus driver and walked down the street to their destination not knowing that in their quiet way they had moved another human being to resolve to do better in the new year and of course more importantly, helped me celebrate because I got off the bus half hour later with a happy light  heart.  Happy New Year !

  it is. I often watch couples interacting. Quite often there is only silence-which is fine or not or  there is  non-understanding of sorts and sometimes hostility. Usually one person is monopolizing the conversation-i have been guilty of that myself..