A Glassful of Life

  Me, my clean, top teeth, and a gourd as a hat. My teeth ache. There is a reason; I had my teeth cleaned. There is a plethora of dentists in this area and last week I shopped around to get the best deal. Last year I paid 50 euros for a simple cleaning that left me underwhelmed. That dentist also gave me a check-up and advised me that I should get a teeth guard. I don’t remember the quote they gave me but even with the member’s discount, it was exorbitant. They told me that I grind my teeth at night. I told them that I didn’t want a teeth guard—I didn’t tell them that in fact, I grind my teeth during the day, not at night—well, perhaps I grind them at night too—but the point is, they made assumptions and I hate it when people make assumptions about me and I’m not going to wear a teeth guard during the day. So, this year I avoided the teeth-guard-dentist and popped into the dentist’s where I had had an emergency repair of a chipped front tooth in February. When I went in for that ...

Luckily I've got these two to look after me.   So, finally, it happened. I got the dreaded covid. It blindsided me. One day I was fine, perhaps a little raspy. The next, I was laid out on the sofa with full-blown symptoms. The virus raged on the Thursday but I tested negative. On Friday morning the virus continued its slash and burn through my body, and I got a positive result. On the third day, I had a temperature of 38.5 and was definitely delirious, but at least that was the last day, and when my fever broke around 6pm, the worst of the symptoms were swept away with it. By the following Friday, I tested negative again. Now, three weeks on I am fully recovered…at least, I thought I was, but as so many sufferers have said, “it lingers,” which is so irritating. The last few weeks have been so up and down it's no wonder I have been feeling seasick. I am short-tempered and clumsy, which makes me even more irritable. A vicious circle that nips at my heels and nibbles away at my se...

My orchids are bloomin' lovely! I am Venus. The Venus of Willendorf. My New Year’s resolutions have gone adrift. I began with great determination and marked quite a few drink-free days off my calendar earlier this year, though not enough. I vowed to do 100 squats per day for a month. And I did. I did the first month and I felt great. So, I did a second month and felt like a superwoman. It was all going fine until around the three-month mark when my knees and hips started grating like—I read a brilliant description somewhere on Facebook—like a goat chewing on an aluminium can—and the pain got steadily worse. For the last three months, I have been crawling around. I go from groin strain to a stiff neck, to pains in the arches of my feet. Is this what old age is like? I even took a Covid test the other day, just to rule that out. It was negative, of course.  So, it’s back to taking turmeric and ginger in large quantities. I hate my body, but I find joy in other things. For example, my...

Like an expectant father, I wait for the rest of the lilies to burst. A view of my front 'garden'. In this season my mind turns to gardening. I have become a very stay-at-home/indoors kind of person, but when the swallows are high and swirling in splendid summer spirals, I raise my head above the parapet and look to the outdoors. My ‘front garden’ consists of a line of pavement in front of my house where I park pots with their assorted plants. Miraculously they are not all spirited away in the middle of the night, although I have had a pot or two stolen or a plant ripped out by the roots; some in the plain light of day. There are also some little mischief-makers who like breaking the leaves of my blue agave. One can tell that small fingernails have been pressed into the fleshy leaves and it irritates me no end. I know that it is the work of children, fascinated with the texture, and I only hope that they grow out of it soon. Unless I catch them in flagrant...

Some gratuitous Jacaranda porn - I'm really trying hard to get out and about - My neighbourhood is worth it. I’ve been busy—busy with things—busy with life. Now that’s got to be a good thing. Life doesn’t happen to me every day. I recently had a visitor here, from Ireland. Not staying in the house, but I kept some time free from work to meet up with him, to go for meals, and try out new restaurants. I hardly know my city at all, so it was nice to get out and about a bit, though in the course of things, I realised that I suffer from real anxiety at the thought of going out. Not so much going to the shops—although I often put that off until I run out of food—but dressing-up going-out—not OTT you understand—just a shower and taking time to match my top to my bottom and find a cardigan or scarf that goes with the ensemble. Perhaps even a matching necklace or bracelet. The first evening I was meeting my friend in town at 8pm, I procrastinated and procrastinated and...