A Close Encounter with a Prickly Pear

I went with my friend last week to photograph a leaning dragon tree in Puntagorda, and we found a tame chough there. I think it makes a good living from tourists.

And then we went to have a look at the ravine, and I brushed gently against a prickly pear. Of course I got hundreds of spines on the shoulder my T shirt, and I couldn't think of driving back until I'd got them out, or the car seat would have pushed them into me.

My friend tried to get them out, but there were so many it was going to take forever. She even suggested driving back to her house without my T shirt, but I was worried that at least one oncoming driver would be so distracted he'd crash - it's not exactly a straight road. So we decided that the lesser evil was for me to take my T shirt off so two of us could work on removing the spines. I sat in the car for that, so as to be a bit less visible from the other side of the ravine. At least I was in the shade!

So there we were, working away at my T shirt, and an old man came down the track!

I threw the T shirt over as much of myself as possible, but he didn't seem a bit embarrassed and stood there chatting to us for at least five minutes, even after I said I'd brushed the prickly pear and got spines all over my T shirt. My friend though he had bad eyesight, and didn't see how little I was wearing. But I suspect he was just bemused, and felt you could expect any bizarre behaviour from foreigners. Or maybe he was just two sandwiches short of a picnic.

Eventually he went, and we got rid of all the prickles we could find, and drove to my friend's house. Thank goodness it was close.

And I had a shower, to get rid of as many left-over spines as possible. Yes, I found a couple in my knickers. How in God's name did they get there?

And for the next few days I was pulling them out of myself. I think I've got them all now.

But if that's what happens when you barely touch it, I'd really, really hate to fall into one.

Crazies.

Yesterday was my day for coming across craziness, and not the good sort.

First up, this video from This Is True. (I love This is True) An American politician called Brent Rinehart is running for re-election with a comic book full of s**t stirring and spelling mistakes. (Does a County Commissioner have much to do with education in his district?)

It also talks a lot about "The homosexual agenda", without ever spelling out what this agenda is.

Well I'm pretty sure I know what the homosexual agenda is. I reckon they want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, same as the rest of us.

And then in the afternoon, I went to a little girl's birthday party. It was a very nice party, and I met a very nice man who was convinced that the astronomical observatory was causing an epidemic of cancer on the island by "concentrating the stellar radiation."

I said this was like blaming thermometers for the heat. The reason they concentrate the starlight is because there's so little of it, and anyway, they're concentrating it away from the people.

We do seem to have a rise in cancer rates though. I doubt that it's any worse here than elsewhere, it's just that we know the people here with cancer.

A free contest

Writers need to read. Did you ever hear of a chef that didn't notice what s/he ate, or a musician that never listened to music?

One of the online magazines I like is GUD, which stands for Greatest Uncommon Denominator.

It's not free, although it is cheap. Much as I like to read for free, I don't expect to write for free, and they have to get the money to pay writers somewhere. They haven't bought anything of mine yet, but I'll keep trying. I particularly like the fact that you can buy single stories. In the digital age, why not?

But, cheapskate that I am, I couldn't resist their competition to win all of issues 1 - 3. See http://www.gudmagazine.com/blog/archive/2008/7/18/issue-3-pre-launch-buzz-contest/


And one day they'll buy one of my stories.

Burnt matches

My hair colour is my own. I paid for the dye: I did the work: it's mine! I've been dying it for years, because I went prematurely grey.

For a long time, I used a strawberry blonde colour that was actually quite similar to my natural hair colour when I was a toddler. It looked pretty and natural. But they stopped making it.

So I tried a new dye that came out about the same colour as almost-ripe persimmons - about as subtle as a fire-engine siren. My husband took one look at it and started calling my fosforita, which means little match, or someone with a fiery temper. So I'd pretend to get mad at him.

I quite liked standing out from the crowd, but it looked really unnatural, and the colour didn't stick properly. After two weeks, all my grey hairs were showing through. So this morning, I tried a darker colour. I was expecting it to come out bright mahogany or a bit lighter. Actually, it's a very dark auburn, and still doesn't look natural.

When my husband came home, he took one look and called me fosforita quemada, which means little burnt match. It's spot on. My hair is exactly the colour of a burnt match-head, and this week, I've got a minor case of burnout.

I'll just have to try again. Maybe it'll be third time lucky.

Or maybe it'll come out pink.

Nasturtiums

When I got back from developing photos, my brother-in-law who lives in the other side of the semi collared me before I got inside, and lead me to the mini-garden between the parking space and the pavement.

I say "mini-garden": it's a triangle of ground with poor, thin soil. Having tried other things, I planted nasturtiums there, since they would survive. I love nasturtiums. Admittedly, most people here regard nasturtiums as weeds (if it's free, it can't be good) and I had neglected them lately. Even so, I think my patch looked better than the ones in front of the other houses.

My brother-in-law had roughly shoved back the nasturtiums, breaking a lot of stems, turning most of it upside-down, and put in cuttings of the bright pink flowers he has in front of his own house. So that's orange and pink together.

I saw red. before I could draw breath to ask what the f___ he was playing at, he said, "Carlos agreed it would be good to plant something here. So I just put these in. Remember to water them occasionally, all right?"

I said through clenched teeth, "I liked the flowers that were there already."

He said, "Well, you can always take them out again." Ignoring the mess he'd made of what was there all ready.

Now I have a habit of going off the deep end and regretting it afterwards. So I bit back the 97 things I wanted to shout, and went to talk to my husband.

No, he did not agree to this. He'd agreed to the idea of maybe putting a bush in there at some unspecified date in the future.

I've taken the cuttings out, of course. (I don't think they'd have survived anyway.) Now I'm trying to calm down enough to have a sensible conversation with my brother in law about this.

If I put this in a short story, do you think people would believe it? I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.