Yodelling toads and screws that are loose

Do you know that moment when a friend invites you out for brunch and you have to decide whether to wash your hair quickly or go out looking like the before photo of a bad hair day? I had a bad night feeling sick and awful ... hardly slept and when I woke up I looked like death warmed up. Greenish face and greasy hair ... and then the phone call inviting me to brunch. Well, I remember from my childhood days that to address greasy hair you could run talcum powder through it to absorb said gunge. But there is one problem. I no longer have talcum powder in the home. What to do? What to do? Out with the cornflour and I dust my hands with it and then through the hair ... and amazingly enough, it worked. But it was raining. I mean seriously, it was pouring and as I ran to the shops (after the brunch) I was thinking of the properties of cornflour. In fact, we had used it last weekend when the grandkids were making slime out of shampoo and salt ... and colouring. And I know that it is great for making things thick and solid. As I chatted to another friend in the shops, I kept on wanting to touch my hair and check to see if it was resembling a cheap plastic wig. But no, it was fine. Sadly these are the things that keep me busy these days. Silly concerns that should really be kept to myself. There are so many people with much worse problems than I have. I was watching 'The Zookeeper's Wife' on Netflix ... fantastic viewing . Based on historical facts, which is great but not always translated well into movies. This time they did the story justice and it was thought provoking and very uplifting. The Jews in Warsaw at the beginning of WWII were having a really tough time of it. Awful, tragic, horrendous. Anyhow as they re-enacted the ghetto scenes my heart was broken at the thought of all those innocent people being so brutally killed. There was one old man who was leading a bunch of children to the death trains. As the zookeeper tried to convince him to make his escape and leave the children behind, he said, 'No, I have to go with them.' and then he started telling the children that they were going to a magical world. He knew that he could not save them all and was not prepared to save himself at their expense. And he knew that they needed his calming presence to help them deal with their awful future. He felt it was his mission to be their guardian angel to protect them from fear and terror by telling them happy stories. Needless to say the cheeks were slightly damp at the end of the scene. My bad hair day vanished into insignificance at their plight. You have the opposites of the evil SS Nazis and the kindness of strangers who tried their best to help where they could. I won't spoil the story if you haven't watched the movie yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hey maybe I should become an 'influencer'??

My cat has been 'gifting' me with live birds lately. I throw the cat (and bird) outside and hope that the poor creature will escape. So far this week I have saved two little birds. One a yellow Hammer (Emberiza Citrinella) and the other a Fantail. (Rhipidura in Latin). I do love the Fantails. They follow you around the garden chatting away as you talk to them. Very friendly little avian inhabitants of my area. Maori say that they represent the imminent death of someone you know if they fly inside the house, not sure what it means if they are forcibly brought in by kitty and friends. My mother would say it means the death of said cat. But then she was always threatening to kill and stuff my pets, but she never did. All talk and no action. Bark worse than bite?

My son-in-law is considering doing some translation work from English to Samoan to bring in a few dollars for the family coffers. And to be eligible to translate, he has to know idiomatic English. Things like 'a stitch in time saves nine' etc. I wish him luck, because seriously idioms can be tricky things. My great grandmother Bond, could speak idiomatic Zulu and I know that she impressed many Zulu with her grasp of the delicacies of their language. Me, well my Zulu is barely negligible after years of neglect. Recently a nephew gave me an Afrikaans book to read that his mother had written. Long time no talkie talkie Afrikaans. So it took a few moments to get my brain into gear to read this story. I am sure that if I was still living in South Africa I would be much better at both languages, but at least I do remember a few bits and pieces and I can actually read the book. Barry went to set up workshops in Chile a few years back. He had a smattering of Spanish and was teaching the local Spanish speaking mechanics how to repair an engine. He wanted to impress upon them the need to be gentle while tightening a screw. Too much tightening would result in a stripped screw and lots of problems. Well, he was using the Zulu equivalent of 'little' and wondering why the Chilean men were confused. As understanding dawned on him he said, 'Un poco.' and they all laughed together and more importantly, they didn't over tighten the screws ... well at least while he was there instructing them.

Tightening screws has been a big part of my life in the past few weeks. I ordered some kit set beds online to turn a bedroom into a more family friendly area for when the grandkids visit. Firstly the courier man dumped the very, very, very heavy boxes at my back door. And there was no way I would ever be able to move them on my own. I took them inside piece-meal one steel pipe at a time. Pick up sticks for adults you might say. Fifty pieces of steel in various sizes. I looked at the instructions and thought 'Yup, I can do this.' Nope, couldn't. Well, I could do the basic beginnings, but when it came to assembly, let me just say, it needed ten hands. I pulled the dining room chairs into the room to act as my surrogate hands ... I would position one pipe into its assigned place, lean it against the chair and start on pipe number two. Well by the time I got to pipe number four or five, the first one or two would get bored and fall over. Start from the beginning and take a deep breath. I did manage quite well and really only needed a little bit of help with bed number one. By the time I got to the second bunk, my bones were aching and my patience was wearing thin. My daughter, Angela and her family arrived for a visit and I told them that they would need to pick up thy bed and make it. And what a great job they did. Not only did Angela find a quicker, more efficient and decidedly easier way of making the bed, but it only took a quarter of the time. We had beds for six people by the end of the evening. And yes, they were safe to sleep on. We made sure of that. Long bolts and lugs and lots and lots of screwing bits into other bits. The grandkids learnt all sorts of practical things during that exercise and none of them were new 'dodgy' words for their vocabulary. They were experts on the sizes of Hex or Allen keys by the end of it all. They knew that the long end was the lever side and was that size to make it easier to turn the screws into their holes. Did we need the surrogate hands ... aka dining room chairs? No, with many hands we made light work of it all.

I also found a fun activity between screwing beds and talking to birds ... an app where you can change black and white photos to colour. Well in theory it looks good. But it all turned horribly wrong when the only colour setting I could find was sepia or orange. There must be a way of changing it into other colours, but I have no clue how to do it. My Primary school play was all about a family of gypsies stealing a child (how is that for racial profiling?) and I was the mother who went to retrieve her child during the final act. I remember the dress I wore was a delicate green colour. Sadly in the enhancing effort, it came out as peachy orange. My Gran made that dress for me, but where did the lampshade looking hat come from? It is not something my mother or gran would ever wear. Did the teacher source it from some auntie? It was during the Jaquie Kennedy era of pillbox hats and I was really hoping to look like a young Jaquie, but no, I didn't. I looked like a lamp stand that someone had forgotten to switch on. When I did my whole emotional reunion scene with my 'daughter', Jeni Moir, everyone in the audience fell about laughing because Jeni was larger than I was. How cruel. I was mortified. No idea how Jeni felt about the whole thing because all I wanted to do was find a hole in the ground and bury myself ten foot deep. And as they say, that was my finale at acting. It scarred me for a life on the stage. Not that I had any leaning towards acting, but who knows, I might have been great in some small way. Maybe I could have been lampshade number two in some other play on Broadway? Who knows? It takes someone with special talents to walk the stage in the spotlights, and those talents are not my forte. I saw with sadness the Cirque du Soleil is going bankrupt. How awful for those amazing gymnasts and performers. Then I was watching a man in Chicago who had started a Lock down puppet theater from his balcony. He had made toys for zoo animals previously and was now out of work during Covid and has created a yodelling toad, Shakespeare and odd and sods that are entertaining people free of charge. He doesn't broadcast his address in the hopes of stopping crowds from forming in his street, but still they come from far and wide. What a great idea to uplift others who are feeling stressed. We, here in New Zealand, are dealing with people who are finding two weeks in isolation a challenge. They keep on breaking out of their hotels and going for walkabouts to buy groceries and alcohol. Maybe those Cirque du Soleil folks will have to find more mundane work opportunities to pay the bills, but at the end of the day, those skills and the joy they have given others, will never go away. They will not need to look back at their careers with embarrassment or shame. They were great and can be again when things return to normal. Sadly those idiots who are breaking out of their expensive, Government paid for accommodation for two weeks, will have no such luck. They will all be standing in the spotlight in the docks of the legal courts and will be given hefty fines or jail terms for putting the general population at risk with their foolishness. Their contribution to our entertainment is to create more stress and fear. What an awful legacy.

And so, dear friends, family and assorted folks, have a great week. Try to stay strong and look for the good around you. There are people out there who entertain with puppets and others like me who have a few loose screws that need tightening.