Out dam black fly out said I as I drenched my black fly infested shrub with a mixture of white vinegar, fairy liquid and water. See I don’t need pesticides, good old fashioned remedy. Of course not sure if it will work. Will keep you posted. I know you can hardly wait….
See how interesting my life has become. I spent a good few hours spraying, then another few hours re-organising and cleaning the patio, then a few hours reading a batch of old letters, and then it was 5 o’clock. Fascinatintg. Am I boring you?
I just can’t get my head around how quickly the days are passing by. I used to complain about time before but now…. How can it have sped up so much? I have repeatedly complained about the speed which time is passing as I get older but since lock down it is in a different league. Why is that? Come on if there is anybody there reading this, tell me why time has sped up when we are doing so much less.
It looks like we won’t be ending lock down any time soon as in the last 24 hours there was another 840 deaths. So much for ‘getting it under control’. If ever we had needed a better government, it is now. I seem to have slipped back into being a news junkie again. I was doing so well for the first month hardly watching any news but that has come to an end and I am now consuming much more than is healthy. I find myself shouting at the tv and swearing at the computer. At least I am not holding it all in.
There is so much conflicting advice re this COVID19. Take Zinc and Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Sleep sitting up, sleep on your front, get a full 8 hours as it helps to build up your immune system, don’t sleep too much because it is not good for your lungs, practice deep breathing and emptying your lungs, drink lots of warm liquid, wash your hands frequently, use hand sanitizer, don’t use hand sanitizer, gargle with salt water, wear gloves, don’t wear gloves, wear a mask, don’t wear a mask … the list is endless. The reality is no one really knows, everything is guess work, trial and error. So I am using my common sense which so far, touch wood or ppp the latter is what we Jews say and don’t ask me what it means but I remember my grandma saying ppp after almost every sentence, has been good to me.
I delved into another box today and spent a wonderful few hours reading love letters from Saul, a Jewish Arab in Cairo in 1937 to my Aunt Billee. I wanted to know why she never married him when it was clear how much he loved her. What happened? It’s like a movie but no happy ending.
Note to self: talk to cousin Maxi in Israel and find out what the back story is.
How interesting to read about what he calls the Communes in Israel, (we now know them as Kibbutz) how he believed then that religion was the root of all evil and that communism was the way forward. He loved the idea of these Communes where some of his brothers currently lived. He thought that it would be a good future if only they could all stop fighting.
He talked about how he had visited Tel Aviv in 1924 and was amazed at the size of the City. What would he think if he could see it now. I first visited Tel Aviv in 1975 and it was still then very much a third world city. When I visited 10 years ago, I was blown away about how it had grown and what it had become. Loved the juxtapositions of the old and the new, the vibrancy and energy of the city and all it had to offer. So different to the calm and grandeur of Jerusalem. Two cities couldn’t be more different.
Saul spoke of Palestine in 1937 and the fighting and the role of the British as despicable as ever “And Englishman shot 25 terrorists to teach them a lesson.” He described how the Communes needed to have constant guards on duty and that he hoped that one day soon they would all live in peace. Some hope there!
I also found in the box a bunch of Liebig Company Fleisch-Extract Cards. And I think I just might make a few pennies on these as they seem to be much in demand by collectors. The Liebig Company produced “Meat Extract”. The famous German chemist Justus von Liebig invented the meat extraction process, which allowed the concentration and preservation of the essential nutrients and flavours of beef in the form of paste or bouillon cubes.
There you go a brief history of your OXO cube. Around 1870 they started to publish fantastic colored lithographed cards and I have quite a lot of them. Not sure whether it is going to replace all the money I have lost on the stock market but hey every little helps.
“Let’s be careful out there”
Serendipity Me 