St Patrick's green avocados and such

I have 27 avocado pear trees growing in my compost bin. All those times that I have tried to grow an avo tree from a pip, with limited success, well I should have thrown those pips on the compost heap. And then covered them willie nillie with grass cuttings, egg shells and assorted compostable junk. Some of the avocado trees are quite large already. The biggest is over a meter tall. But fear not, I will not be living in an avocado jungle, no, they will all perish at the first sign of frost. And frost is not far away. I was watching a programme on how to live better for less. These two men go into a home that is overspending on junk, and they buy them healthy food stuff. Well this one couple were given some avocado pears to eat. Yum. But they had never seen one before and the Dad says 'It looks like a pear that has gone rotten.' Really? Have they only ever had guacamole from a bottle? I don't know if they did eat it or not because I was so disgusted with them that I changed channels. And would you believe it, the screen was filled with Jamie Oliver cutting up an avo. Obviously those people on the other programme never watch Jamie. But, here is the thing with avo's, you don't know if you have a perfect avo until you open it up. And yet, Jamie seems to be gifted with the luck of the Irish and gets a perfect avo each time. As the knife starts to slice, I notice that spot on the avo where the stem is usually, and it is green. A sure sign that the avo is not quite ripe yet. I, personally, would have put the fruit back in its basket and waited another day. But no, when Jamie cuts through, it is smooth and creamy and perfect. Me, myself, well I think they rig these cooking shows. I reckon he has hundreds of under-ripe avocados flung into his compost heap every year. In Zululand, where I grew up, those avocado trees would grow and grow and grow and you would be surrounded by an avo forest before you could say Jack Spratt if you left them to grow wild in the compost. Someone once suggested that I take my compost avo trees and re-pot them and bring them inside for the winter. What? Where would I plant these trees when they do become adult? My garden would be swamped, no, overrun and overshadowed. Those trees grow huge. Massive. And the chances of my getting fruit off them before I die are minimal. Not worth the stress. And their pollen makes me sneeze like a crazy person. What I should have done is make guacamole out of the slightly brown avo pulp. But then I would need to buy crisps and crackers to eat with it .. and they are not good for me at all. And if you don't have crackers or crisps then how on earth do you eat guacamole? By the spoonful? I think not.

My daughter, Nix and I, went to Auckland to watch the musical 'The Book of Mormon'. Yes, I know it was at the beginning of the Covid 19 scare, but we took a bottle of hand sanitiser as a precaution. Talking about the luck of the Irish, it was the St Paddy's day parade. As we sat eating a New York pizza in a small restaurant, the bagpipe bands and the leprechauns on stilts and dancing people in green walked past our table. So happy to have entertainment like this. I love bagpipes. It's the Celt in me. Foot tapping away under the table and smile on my face, I enjoyed. But I was a bit upset. No Danny Boy was sung or played or danced to. What is the world coming to if a St Patrick's day parade is bereft of Danny Boy? Did you know that the Catholic Church banned it from being sung at funerals? Or that it was actually written by a British lawyer? According to the researcher, Malachy McCourt, the song was connected to a Jack the Ripper suspect and even Charles Dicken's son. No idea which son of Charlie was involved. He had ten children and about half of them were sons, so will have to do a bit more research to prove or disprove this claim. The tune was written when Jane Ross, a noblewoman, heard a fiddler outside her home in Derry, playing a catchy tune called 'The Derry Air'. He turned out to be a blind busker and Jane asked him if she might notate his song for a friend. She sadly never noted the original fiddler's name and he will forever be nameless and unrecognised. It was only many years later that a lady in America heard the song and sent the music to her brother, a lawyer, in London, called Fred Weatherly. He had already written the words and was just waiting for a tune to fit his lyrics. He published it in 1913 and it became an instant hit. But what I did discover is that many Irish folks hate the Plastic Irish folks singing the song badly, so have banned it from many pubs, especially on St Patrick's day. Who wants to hear a drunken lout trying to sing Danny Boy? Well, not me for sure, for sure. What are Plastic Irish? Well they are the folk that claim to be Irish just so they can get plastered on the national day. As I am named for the great saint, I can only claim a smidgen of Irish in my bloodline. I am 1/8 th Irish. 1/8th Scottish and then English and Dutch in equal measure. I have more of Boudicca's blood in me than Danny Boy. More the warrior queen than the singer. In fact my gran would often tell me not to sing in public because I have a voice that sounds like a cat peeing on an old tin roof. Mmmm that warrior queen says to me that I should never listen to defeatist talk like that and so, yes, I do sing. Badly at times and never, ever do I attempt Danny Boy.

Okay, I know some of you might find my fascination with history a bit of a bore, but so what. We all have to have a hobby. Mine just happens to be looking at the lives of the dead. Recently a country song popped into my head called 'Elvira' sung by the Oak Ridge boys way back in my youth. Which for the record was not a song about a girl, but rather about a street in Nashville. Anyhow, as the song irritated me after a while, I thought I should check to see if I had an Elvira in my family tree. And yes, there was one. Elvira Corbin Edwards.(although I am sure my Mom called her Vi or something similar). I do not claim to be psychic, but sometimes the dear departed speak to me through songs. My Dad's song was Santa Lucia and I know he is around when that song pops into my head. No, there are no real messages, just an awareness that I am not alone. And not in a creepy way either. I love the words to Santa Lucia ... and will now bore you with them: On the sea it glitters, The silver star, Placida is the wave, Prospera is the wind, On the sea it glitters, The silver star .... and so it continues. But of course it is sung in Italian. My Dad spent some time in Italy during World War 2 and enjoyed a good opera or two. Elvis sang it and now Placido Domingo sings it these days, but he was not around when my Dad first heard it. And even I sing Santa Lucia, in the car where no one can hear me. I sing it in a bad Italian accent that would burn holes in the ears of any music lover or Italian. But what about Elvira? Well she is not technically my family. She married Austin Spratt who was related through marriage to my father. To get the song out of my head, I sat down and tried to find out what Elvira wanted of me or was trying to tell me. Sadly no luck as to the message she wanted me to discover. Then I rambled through my family tree and filled in blanks for the Hillestads and Uncle Charlie Othen. Charlie survived the sinking of the Titanic only to die in his bath in Durban many years later. And yay, the song Elvira stopped playing in my head. Did Auntie Vi get fed up with waiting for me to piece together her story? Did she go to haunt some other relative? Maybe my cousin, Deidre? Or Alan or even Bryan? I would hate to think that she never managed to find her mouthpiece. I just know it wasn't me. Did Uncle Charlie chuck her out of my head? Who knows. But I will be avoiding the country rock station on Spotify for a while in case the song re-appears.

We are all on semi-lockdown. No swimming in the town pool, some libraries are closed and really its all about keeping our distance from others. I am lucky that our local shop is not that busy. I might have to buy a different brand than I normally do. But I was thrilled when my usual Coconut oil was not in stock and I actually found a cheaper version of that staple hiding on the top shelf. Now, I am short, so top shelf stuff is usually out of my reach. I have been known to use a packet of spaghetti to edge a bottle of something or a tin of something else, to a spot on the shelf that I can reach. I have had a few close calls with bottles falling off and it is only my lightening fast reactions that have allowed me to avert catastrophe. I have had a tin or two smash onto the floor. But hey, a dented tin is okay, usually. But what I found amusing was the toilet paper aisle. All the normal sized packets were sold and I had to end up buying a huge packet that will last me for months. Not that I am complaining, but I don't like seeing that packet take up half my bathroom floor space. For your information, I have a tiny bathroom. My home was built in the days before inside toilets were a thing. So when they decided to update the bathroom many years later, they 'lost' the tub and inserted a shower and a toilet into the same space. Great if you only like showers, but not a happy place if you like to soak in a tub. Now, I am not saying that I actually want to take a bath because we all know that as you get older, trying to get out of the tub is a challenge. But in my dream home, when I am agile and able to clamber out of tubs, I want a home with a large soaking tub and lots of floor space ... and shelves to put smelly candles on. Oh maybe I should stock up on candles? No, that is just silly. I have enough food and stuff and have even filled up my gas bottle just in case I cannot leave the house and need gas to heat my shower. I have survived the thousand plus crowd at the theatre while we watched The Book of Mormon, which by the way we thoroughly enjoyed. And now I am doing what any self respecting introvert does, and enjoying the extra time to watch movies and chase down recalcitrant family members who put songs in my head.