YYEEEEHHHAAA

Checkeed shirt, chickens, porch, rocking chair, searing heat, banjo-boy. We have three of these items, well on the way to the deep south. Oh, we're already in it.
Ezra after three weeks of owning the instrument, Keen!! and the voisinage are having a rest from full-on drum practice.

Edge of water

I was going to post a blog about Satie's leg, or rather his lack of leg. The runty one (Italian Greyhound) now has three legs, following two operations to try and salvage the front drivers side leg. Yes, amputation. The vet and I looked at each other sadly, and both said the word. There was no other solution.
We often, me and the hothouse residents, wonder what happened to the leg in question. Well, not often, that could be said to be. . . odd. It's sad to think of it alone in a bin somewhere in Carcassonne; maybe I should have brought it back and made a sculpture.
Enough. Instead of photo of Satie, tripodular runt, here is a nice picture of a crazed fountain in Bordeaux that Mark snapped. I was especially impressed by the water spray issuing from the horses nostrils, and the webbed/lions feet/hoof arrangements. Fab. As for those cavorting three, and a fish in the foreground . . . imagine the meeting when the sculptor had proposed this edifice. "You want to what? with how many horses? oh, all right then."
No money scrimped there; presumably they weren't teetering on world financial collapse at the time.
Hoorah for ostentaious wonderments.

LALO GUERRERO - LOS CHUCOS SUAVES/CENTRAL HEATING

I hate this time of year. After a while my body accepts that if I sit down longer than about five minutes it starts to freeze over. The urge to get back into bed with hot water bottles and two duvets is ever present.
After a few weeks it becomes easier-ish, but the memories of being permanently warm and even very hot, die hard. One method I have found over the years is to dance around like a total pillock. Various songs do it, 'Blackbox, ride on time', yes, I don't know why either, but I think Suzie mentioned it once too. Bob Marley+ Funkstars remix of 'Sun is shining', 'Sex bomb' by Tom Jones and ? 'Badder Badder Schwing' by Freddy Fresh, and anything 'Latiny' hence this wonderful track above.

Think the link has gone so here's a pic of Lalo Guerrero instead.

November 15th

Or is it May?
Weird, and wonderful. The plants are full of spring colour, boosted by the rain and warmed by the gentle sun . . . aaaahh. Hope we don't all suddenly get a very abrupt shock.
This purple thingy is a wonderful specimen which only flowers very late on in the season. Therefore it sometimes it only gets a couple of weeks before frost zaps it. This year it has been nodding its multiple violet heads happily for about six weeks.
None of our elderly voisins are saying anything like; "ooo, it's going to be really cold this winter, the chickens have been roosting with their feet facing the South", or "rats have been seen making duvets." I spoke to someone just down the road yesterday. He can't remember a mild November like this in his last eighty odd years . . .

****!

This is a photo of the vile mess of wires next to the computer desk.
Also a portrait of the inside of my brain when I try to use internet banking. This morning, being rather tired, and attempting to log on while playing air guitar to Radiohead . . . I locked myself out AGAIN.
There must be a whole department devoted to idiotic folk like me, in each internet bank.
'O God, it's her again.'
I must have wasted a large tree's worth of paper by now in the endless letters which arrive with the new secret code. I faithfully mark the important data down in it's super crack-proof code: the name of a fish we had when I was five; the date my friend sprained her foot in 1982, etc, etc. And then . . . promptly forget it. Which pretend name in the address book? which address book? Maybe I marked it down in that tiny handmade paper book from Paperchase. Or did I try to memorise it all? Try meditation, perhaps that will draw it out.
Ommm . . . Arnold the rabbit, 1433, Mr Ayton the pervert janitor from junior school. Crap, all wrong. Hit the button 're-register' and do the whole thing. Again.
I remember whan the bank only used to open from 3.00p.m until 5p.m.
Ooh, those were the days. Well probably not. Must try harder.

Damm, that's a hot instrument y'all

Just the thing for a dark depressing, rain-soaked day, (not that I am really complaining . . . much.) Little film of Stan playing Ezra's handmade, plank guitar.
Nothing more to be said really.

Instrument airing

These instruments form just ONE of the 'gamelans' that the Hothouse compound owns.
This the 'Salunding' given to Mark by his teacher in Bali. Most wonderful carved red, gold and green metallophones which give an extraordinary cross section of bell tones.
Another gamelan is in the garage . . . sadly, and sadder still, the really huge gamelan, which fills about the size of say, the floor space of the Café de Commerce in Limoux, is still housed in someone's grenier waiting for the moment that one of the French communes wake up and realise what an incredible teaching tool it is.
Mark can get a group of twenty children, adults, aged folks, anyone, to be able to play a gamelan piece together within two hours. The music school of Carcassonne have expressed interest. We'll see.
This film is of the medium-sized gamelan being rehearsed in the Théâtre Municipal of Carcassonne for part of a piece of music called . . . err, Contentless, or was it Endless? Oh, yes, I remember: 'Timeless'. I can't recall much about the actual performance other than I felt very cold, wanted to watch a re-run of Life on Mars and eat some custard.
The interlude bits by my husband were of course brilliant. If you want to see more, look at Youtube 'hothouse'.
And, if anyone has loads of money and fancies building their own gamelan pavillion with resident teacher, in their garden, let me know.