Tuesday 4 March 2014

Hola and forgetteries

As the best laid plans of mice, and women are often hit for six, kind fate treated me to this yesterday.

Firstly I got up, did my lymphoedema drainage massage, put on my hideously expensive sleeve and glove, and set about meeting the day with the required degree of fortitude and determination.

The man who is repairing the garage wall was to arrive while I was home, so that he could get inside the garage and repair that part too. Previously he came and did the outside while I was out, and I did not know when and if he was coming. Then he telephoned to say his car was emitting serious quantities of smoke, and that he needed to get it to a repair premises before anything worse happened. Then he would arrive here on his motor bike, which contained all his stuff.

This meant my plans for the day had to be rearranged. And here I must confess guiltily that I had forgotten the note in my diary that said to expect my niece the bride, the groom and the Mexican in-
laws - father, mother and sister.  They arrived, dumped their stuff, and headed for Bondi Beach, where they had a good time, despite the cool weather and water.

In the meantime Paul, the repairman arrived and set to work. As he had said he had some surplus paint, I asked him to paint (at my own expense) a small section of wall with the paint crumbling, cracking and flaking off, and he agreed to do so. I nicked off to meet a friend for lunch.

The work was finished and looks good. Now I am worrying about how long it will be before the local school children inflict some graffiti and these lovely new surfaces. The man down the lane had some graffiti on his wall yesterday, so he charged down to the school to complain. He was out on the prowl this morning and so was I, with the hose, trying to see whether the rather numerous paint splatters and drops could be washed off. No, they couldn't.

Eventually everyone arrived back here and we spent the afternoon sitting around with nibblies. I made some baba ganouj, very nice, too, with raw vegetables.

So we all sat around and talked and looked at the wedding photographs I had taken. The bridegroom and his sister speak English, and his father a little, the mother, no English. Some years ago I learned some Spanish, but these days it is lurking in some very deep recesses. Infrequently some words emerged, but not very many verbs. However there was quite a lot of conversation, and quite of lot of several of us not understanding very much at all. We had a good time, though, and went out to dinner at a restaurant up the road, and then they caught a taxi to the airport.

It was lovely to see them all.

2 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

How nice to hear that you have had some wins. About time too.

Pam said...

That sounds lovely. And now I must go and find out what baba ganouj is.