DOWNTOWN DIDDY

I like laughing out loud. 

P Diddy just did it for me.

THEIR GENERATION

You never actually own your most precious possessions.

You merely look after them until it suits a previous/present generation to filch.

Defti Thefti

LOULOUTHIA LIBERTY

I once wrote a short story where the techie central character invented an app for choosing your best-case date for topping yourself (or anyone else, for that matter, so long as you knew their key dates).

But let's deal with ones own suicide: you tap in all the dates that count - yours and others' birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, dates of meaning or memories - anything over which your bumping yourself off would cast an unfair gloom forever more.

I recall that you could also grade the dates in importance, i.e. everyone ticks Christmas as the one day over all that you dont want to mess up for your nearest and dearest.

Then you press the button and the app whirrs and wheezes and comes up with a suggested date equi-distant from everything significant and with baggage. It was a very neat device and you could choose the sportsman version that steered you clear of all the Big Game days (so you didnt screw up future Superbowls or Test Matches for your homies), or the artist version that warned you off key dates on the musical or artistic calendar, etc etc.

I can't remember how the story ended but I received a ton of mail asking for the most minute details of the 'Sukaidometer'.

Anyway, I was today reminded of my clever idea while looking round the property and realising that I was short-changed on the full euphoria when freedom finally came.

It's no use suddenly being spared in winter because you're indoors anyway, hiding from the weather. 

The time for the Angel of Mercy to strike is when spirits are lowest and hopelessness blossoming on every twig, when the prospect of vile gardenry is everywhere and no escape.

That's when to have the prison door open and a sour-faced screw announce, "All right get outta here ... no more gardening for you."

There's you gazing despairingly thru the cell bars at the blue sky and waving fronds and clank of spade and secateurs ... the day fucked ... but no! You're free. 

Hard to believe, huh? You think it's a trick, you'll be reaching for a celebratory tot on the patio, sticking your tongue out at some accursèd petal-y thing and wham! April Fuchsia Fool, sucker. 

It's got to be in the middle of the busiest most depressing time of the hobby season.

January doesn't offer the same 'bummer to bliss' extremes.

DEEMED INCOME

• Taxman
• Taxed un-income

NEVER HAVING TO SAY SORRY

Intriguing review in the NYT of Jonno Dee's    A Thousand Pardons.

Set me in mind of my own family's pieces of thefty works and inability refusal to come out with even a strangled S-word.

• Confession as a business strategy - love it! In our case up in Gouvia Heights, it was more like denial as home and social strategy
• Person A grants B forgiveness - which is redeemed?
• Ha ha - the idea of someone being subjected to a level of disgrace so epic as to leave ones 'casual acquaintances' unsure how to acknowledge it. 
• Ugh - a bit bone-close here: Dee being "interested less in emotional nuance than in the opportunities that crisis affords." 

It's either the sort of review you read or not. Just offerin'

CARER CRASH

I know because I'm Exhibit A and I've watched myself go down, but it's good to read what a pal sends me - this. Yes, indeed ~ big deal, as any caregiver will tell you.

• I used to ask if any research had been done into the long-term effects of what I was being put through. It was a trick question, I knew the answer: not a moment's thought had crossed their minds that research was even needed. 
• Quite apart from slaving on vile gardenry
• Quite apart from facing 60cms across a table the thief of one's most precious mementos
• 60cms from dementia repeatia  droning ad murderous nauseam.

  If I meet some fellow sop in danger of taking on care grovelry, I'll tell them outright:

"If I had a pistol I would drill you where you stand and happily go to the chair for saving you the hell that lies ahead.

FFS, find a brawny-armed bovine bully of a pro' - no truck with extra-mural gardenry shit, take it  straight to her manager ... and walk off the job."

Thievery? A smacking back-hander there and then while contempt and anger are still white hot. And keep whacking.

This article is too coy about the torture.

The comments at the time had it right about my own theft: 

"Can you imagine how far down the moral sewer you'd have swill to come up with a double-act like that? What a piece of work."

• Hire a hardened outsider who simply won't be buggered around. 
• Change shifts every six months to save sanity
• Count the silver
• Don't expect them at any funeral. Enough will have been enough and they'll have kicked the sand off and be miles away, knocking back a deservèd slug or five and not giving a damn about clanging bells. Enough toll taken. 
• Who cares about the carers?
• Breaking point ~ Long and arduous

If you're going to shove anyone's face down the bog bowl of your own hobby, when they're allowed up for air, don't expect too aesthetic an appreciation of the finer points of the porcelain.

.

VINTAGE GREEK SONGS

Interesting link.

She knows I search out this stuff so she sent me the link and said we might listen together some time.

We won't because she shies away from meeting. Once, it was every night but we icarus'd it too far and she pulled back so far that she seems unable to come back into the sunshine. Damn that hurt, but I've come to accept. In ghastly American, "I respect that."

I don't, of course, and it comes out in our phone calls she puts the phone down, not slamming it - however that sounds to the other end - but a soft click so sometimes I don't know she's gone. Except of course I do. The sound of her being there would be the surprise.

"absolute disaster"

Especially when smug guests of the gardenry persuasion were present, I would wonder aloud to my mother why on earth anyone would want to turn a pastime they themselves enjoyed into an innocent other's object of complete loathing?

"It's just a fucking hobby," I'd hiss, as I danced attendance on the same old simper-fi brigade ... "Like making jigsaws or knitting ... candle and soap making ... strumming the guitar, even."

Some ignorama once pointed over to a vase of plantiness and asked, "What? You don't find those a thing of beauty?"

"That," I hissed, "is not gardening. I'm talking about ramming someone's head down your hobby and when he's finally allowed to come up for air, expecting him to admire the curve of the porcelain, the choice of typeface for the Thos. Crapper maker's name."

Just a piddling frigging hobby - like origami or stamps - a pleasant way to pass time when the hours grow heavy - your time, not bend the ear and back of every non-believer unlucky enough to swim into ones ken.

I was reminded of those vile and ser-vile days on the treadmill by this story of the collapsed jigsaw: terrible story, tho' I gave a heartless guffaw on first reading.

40,000-piece jigsaw puzzle created for a world record attempt ... collapsed. Watch how it folds. "Absolute disaster."

That was the sort of thing I pictured as I went about the futile toil on my mother's hobby.

PATRICIA ELLEN COOKSON

PATRICIA COOKSON MEMORIAL

A moving message and invitation from Patricia Cookson's sons.  They ask that it be passed on to all concerned, which please let's do so, and pack that church and do Patricia proud.  From 'The Boys':  "We would be honoured to see any of mother's numerous friends at either of her memorial services. We would be appreciative if you could pass this on to any of those who may not be on this list as her friends are spread far and wide and her address book would need a code breaker to decipher it’s so complicated! (see invite below). We are all very proud of her and feel the obituary that was published in the Telegraph last week was a fitting to tribute to the wonderful person that was our ‘Mum’ . With Love "Her Boys” Όσοι επιθυμούν να αποχαιρετήσουν την μητέρα μας Πατρίτσια μπορούν να  συμμετάσχουν στην εκδήλωση για τη μνήμη της.  Για όσους ζουν στην Κέρκυρα θα πραγματοποιηθεί λειτουργία στην εκκλησία της Παναγίας της Κασσοπίτρας στην Κασσιώπη το Σάββατο 11 Μάη 2013 στις 12 το μεσημέρι.  Αντί λουλουδιών προσφορές στο Χαμόγελο του Παιδιού. Θα ακολουθήσει γεύμα στο χωριό.

Patricia Ellen Cookson 13th May 1946 – 31st March 2013 'The Boys’ would like to ask all those who wish to say goodbye to Mum, to join us in a celebration of her life. For those who live in Corfu or who made the island a ‘home from home’ there will be a service at The Church of Panayia Kassopitra, Kassiopi On Saturday 11th May at 12.00pm Followed by drinks at Porto Taverna in the harbour Another service will be held in London at St. Luke’s Church, Sydney Street, Chelsea on Thursday 6th June at 2.00pm Followed by a drinks reception Family flowers only & no one to wear mourning black. Any charitable donations to go to ‘Smile for a Child’ in Corfu"

BULGER BASHERS

Too bloody slow for my liking, but we're getting there.

• Pathetic that the combined websteria/bloggerati/twitterritorial irregulars have flubbed it like this for so long, but this is a speck of daylight. 

• IDs revealed.

Siga siga, ever alert, finger on the button.

They're out there. Stalk and track. Risk, harm and death.

Caroline Philp honed website

• Wonderful crisp website.

• Everything laid out there, a clear menu of goodies.
• Excellent lay-out and clik-thru.
• No-nonsense text and captions.

 My mother, who adored Caroline and was herself no chi-chi dauber, her first comment was how 'normal' C was. 

• I love this site. Everything Caroline crafts turns to gold.
• Go to 't, admire, buy. 

One day, someone will point to a chef-d'oeuvre in your collection and ask,

"But surely, that's not an original? - my dear, how much is it worth?"

"Ssh, Henry thinks it's a copy and the original's in the vaults."

Patricia Ellen Corry Reid, RIP

God bless and God rest dear Patricia.

She was the first friend I made here when I arrived on April 11 2006 and she immediately hauled me onto her never-resting plot-hatching Corfu carousel.

I knew no-one except my mother's simper-fi garden gab-gab bunch, so wherever we met she would grab me and whizz me round the room for whirlwind intros.

She understood my mother better than I realised and looking back I see she spotted bang to rights the spiritual graveyard ahead if I continued down the vile gardenry route my mother intended for me. I was just too thick and blind to see it at the time.

Wonderful lady.

CAROLINE ~ Painter Muralist

If I hadnt just typed that headline with my own mischievous hand I'd declare it an impostor. In fact, i do distrust it and am gazing suspiciously at my typing hand as if it were some alien Dr Strangelove-like limb out to get me in trouble.

I mean, look at it - shocking in its straightforward simplicity.

Caroline Philp - painter muralist - her blog lives again.

But where the puns, the wordplay?

• Blogging babe back on the block
• Oh, Carol! - the prequel
• Karess of Kyma 
• Acrylics Ahoy!

All those ghastly attempts at whipcrack humour. Wassup?

Nope, just a celebratory post that the lady's back 'n' blogging, and she goes straight into my HTM-elliflous hit parade along with the other goodies: 

• Jimmy Potts
• Simon Baddeley
• Ricky Wells - altho' I'm wondering about Wells-sahib, his excellent bundle having gone walkabout of late.

STOP PRESS ~ Wait! Ricardo reports "Currently running two while experiencing a dry writing season.

Confident that the rain will return." 

Godspeed the downpour.

• Sideways through Zion
• Unwritten Gospels

And don't forget CP's wonderful Blurb book, swiftly yours via Fedex which transforms into Speedex for us on Prospero's Isle.

Oh how my hand itches to be of mischief!

That Diva Dauber taps my inner Gollum, but no, I'm going to behave because the hot-button links of KYMA PHILP MURALIST (what have you) will have every search engine around bringing this post up and I don't want to frighten away the faithful.

I've had to self-rap myself on the knuckles for posting an earlier 'floating mine' decoy blog that had an unsuspecting stalwart on the rocks. Whoops.

ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΕΠΙΣΚΕΠΤΕΣ ΣΤΟ ΚΤΗΜΑ «ΣΑΝ ΛΟΥΚΑ»

My Greek language teacher, the wonderful Aleko Damaskinos, has come to my rescue wearing his other hat as professional translator.

I sit here with faeces-bespattered kitchen door, awaiting a growing list of tradespersons and acquaintances who do not turn up.

I need to go out soon but I dread the idea of visitors turning up and being subjected to the same abuse as me.

Hence this message that will greet each one    

Παρακαλώ να προσέχετε τους γείτονες μου, την Μαρία, Σοφία και Ρόμπι ΠΑΛΛΗ.

Έχουν αρχίσει να καταστρέφουν τα λουλούδια του κήπου μου και ρίχνουν περιττώματα σκύλων στην πόρτα μου.

Για να μην νομίσει κάποιος κατά λάθος ότι ανήκετε στο κτήμα μου, παρακαλώ διαπιστώσετε αμέσως την ταυτότητά σας για να μην έχετε την μεταχείριση που αρμόζει σε αυτούς.

"To Visitors to San Luca

Please be careful of my neighbours - Maria, Sofia and Robbo PALI.

They have taken to destroying flowers on my property and throwing dog faeces at the door.

To save you being mistaken as part of my household, please identify yourself immediately on sight so as to be spared the treatment they are dealing to me."

As I've said elsewhere, I need a bit of private order and citizen protection.

I should be ok because the law firm I inherited from my late mother belongs to none other than Mr Nikolaos Dendias himself - Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection