For garden lovers: new post 'Chance and flower sellers' on my garden blog

Just a reminder (something on my bloglists doesn't work): On www.gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com  I have a new post about 'Chance and flowers sellers'. Actually I wrote it in 2010 - but then I had the problem with too many photos on Google and deleted a lot - that's why I start to scatter some of my (old, but for most of you unknown ) texts among the quotes and new texts.
You might know that I collect with my camera - among other themes store windows mannequins - the one above I found in Munich on a big fleamarket. The mixture of old-fashioned clothes and lascivious 'shyness' fascinated me.

Siamese Cats, Symmetry and Disappearances

In a comment to my last post John Gray remarked attentively: 

                                                 That is ONE. Art Deco cat  

"Potzblitz!", as people around Frederic the Great would have said - or, also charmingly old-fashioned: "Ei der Daus!" (Nowadays even Google says only "Oops!", not even "sorry" - but what can one expect of an institution that - at last in Germany - also doesn't know the word "please"? "Sign in!" they bellow). 

            So: only ONE cat. How could I overlook that? Do I become professionally blinkered? I mean, being deeply involved in Crime TV, of course I know "Silver Blaze" by Sherlock Holmes, the famous short story 

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."^[

(Yes, from this short story Mark Haddon got the title "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"). 

So: There is only ONE cat, says John. Where is the other? 

In Germany we have a saying - "He said he just left the house to buy some cigarettes"  wails little wifee - meaning: he will never return - up and away he is, the rogue. Trying to Catch a Carven A?  

Had the cat sneaked away? Applying for  a major part in "A Lady  Cat Vanishes"? 

Our German poet Matthias Claudius has written a beautiful song, "Abendlied" - (see my translation on my blog Britta's Happiness of the Day: http://burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.de/2012/11/abendlied-evening-song-der-mond-ist.html) 

There is more moon, says Claudius, as you sometimes see. 

Or as Shakespeare said:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I love Zen. As you know there is a general absence of symmetry in Japanese art. Okakuro notes that true beauty "could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete."  

But for the lovers of Western harmony I added the second cat above, symbol of the Egyptian god Bastet. 

Is it perfect now, John? 

Fitness versus Cigarettes

In this opulent building, Greater London House, the London Kieser weight training center is housed. (Though, before you get envious green eyes like the cat: it is in the basement).

I think it quite ironical that the building formerly has been The Carreras Cigarette Factory - a huge Art Deco Building in Camden. One brand of cigarettes was The Craven.

"The building's distinctive Egyptian-style ornamentation originally included a solar disc to the Sun-god Ra, two gigantic effigies of black cats flanking the entrance and colourful painted details. When the factory was converted into offices in 1961 the Egyptian detailing was lost, but it was restored during a renovation in the late 1990s" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carreras_Cigarette_Factory - it's worth reading!

Well, people changed their minds, and now in the upper stores are media and advertisement agencies.

Back in Germany in a month I will have to make a decision:
my membership at Kieser runs out (I have been there now for 7 years, can do the exercises in my sleep, but get good results. They have only weight training).
Additional I have another membership in a posh fitness club around the corner (you can't go there without elaborate make-up :-) - I used it mostly in winter for running on the cross-trainer, when rain, cold and snow made me sit on the sofa instead of walking through Berlin. This club is an Eldorado for almost everything: weight training, aerobic, large swimming pool, Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates - whatever you want. The fee is much higher than Kieser's - though, if you decide to come in the morning between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. it is affordable.
I got a training in different weight machines there the day before yesterday. Went again today, leaving the house at 9 p.m. Coming back I looked at my watch: oooh - 2 1/2 hours... (Kieser takes this time too, with going there by underground, BUT I can come in the afternoon, in the time when my vital spirits have sunk a bit.
My "prime time" for working (with my head, not 'out') is between 7a.m and 12 o'clock. So - if I come home from Elixia tired, take a shower, dress anew - my first 'best time' is gone. The second one will start later.
They tell you to come three times a week.
And now I have to read "Your gym is punk-ass compared to this in the Ukraine!" Look at those pictures! http://bzfd.it/14ciEq4

Berlin, I'm back!

On the photo above you see what I left when I went to London, to the Chelsea Flower Show: my balcony started to bloom, my roses were in buds, 'Gertrude Jekyll'  opening one eye.
I don't show you what it looked when I came back.
But it took me some time - to be exact: Tuesday to Wednesday - to work through 'Moomin Valley's Jungle'. My balcony-sitter - only watering, 'practically' putting all 'things' down on the floor - had left for a well-earned holiday - just before Berlin was hit by a three-days heat-wave (over 32°C) - so first I saw "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" - better: "The Dead, the Yellows, and the Ugly". All roses faded (hope some will forgive me and show up at a little forgive-and-forget party in early autumn). But they live - as the bux, the Japanese quince (well, sort of...), the vine, the morning glory of Karl Foersters house, and a few others.
And a surprise: the lilies from last year are in full bloom (yellow, as last year - but beggars can't be choosers). So: I can put my machete down for a while, rest a little - though it's cold again, and rainy, and I won't sit long on the balcony. As Gertrude says:

"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness, it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust." 

That I'll need.

London at Your Feet

Yes, we did it!
I had wanted it so much, to go up the Shard. 310m it is high (though the visitor comes 'only' to 232m high)
The ride with the elevator was not as exciting as I had hoped (you know, I am an absolute fan of the moment an aeroplane takes off ) - no, it was moderate, no tingling in the ears or butterflies in the stomach.
You descend on level 68: a great view from inside through some of the 11.000 panes of glass. 
If you climb a few stairs up to level 72, it gets a bit more adventurous: still glass walls around you, down to your feet, but also fresh air and wind coming from above your head - and London looks even more like a mass of tiny toys a child has wilfully thrown out of a box:

In the ample month I have been here in London I have seen so much (even the list of the gardens I have seen would exhaust you!) - my sweet Landlady asked every morning: "What are you doing today?" - and when I told her in the evening what I had done, she often was more than astonished.
For example: the day before Hans arrived I had:
- wandered through the whole (!) beautiful Battersea Park 

- crossed the Albert Bridge by foot

- walked along the Thames to the Chelsea Psysic Garden
- and of course visited it extensively (will write about it on my blog  'Gardening in High Heels')
- had lunch there and talked for half an hour with a very interesting couple from Northern London
- then I walked towards Sloane Street, decided it was time for a coffee, and visited The Old Pensioners 
- there by chance I met my old acquaintance from the last time, when I had been there with Anne - and he gave me a special tour through the whole building and its surroundings, afterwards we went to a Café near Sloane Street and chattet
- then I went home by bus.
That was a normal day. As in Bath, where I have seen so many attractions.
So: when I leave London, I do it with mixed feelings: I love to be here very, very much. I love the people, who are so friendly and so charming, I love the city, that is even more lively as Berlin, has a more daring architecture, and so many treasures. I was glad to meet representatives of the Old England, and of the Modern England, the mixture of many cultures and different people.
Samuel Johnson said "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."
I can't imagine that I will ever get tired of London.
Though - today in the evening, I have to confess: I am a bit tired. Just so, in a normal way.
I will fly back to Berlin tomorrow, and of course I look forward to our home, and my balcony, and lovely Berlin. So: See you there!

Just meet me at the Shard, on the secret platform 9¾ , we'll have only to jump through the glass wall ... 

Happy Birthday, Hans!

Today was Hans' Birthday - and we celebrated it in London! He had arrived on Thursday, and today, after a wonderful dinner in the Orangerie of Kensington Palace he had to fly to Berlin again - I will follow tomorrow.
The days have been packed full with adventures - and were over too soon!

"Pretty Cool for a Pensioner"??

First I want to say: I really adore Joanna Lumley!
I LOVED her as Patsy in "Absolutely Fabulous" - so hilarious, so blunt - so wonderful!
Then I loved her campaign for the Gurkhas.
And I think she is a very pretty role models for the "Young at Heart".
But I didn't like her last advert for "In the home with Sky Go":  www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLCGphxg6ds
There she is shown as a lovely to look at person - but behaving like a woman of the Fifties.
I don't believe that she (!) all these years had endured to watch (for her: boring) motor races with her husband without going to buy her own television set... And a bigger one as that little laptop she uses in the kitchen!!! I firmly believe that Joanna has what Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own." (And she was not speaking of the kitchen).
But what really annoys me is that seemingly everbody does believe that people, as soon as they become pensioners - and in lovely England they can become that with 60 years, I have heard - get weak in the brain, lose their marbles, suddenly don't know how to use a mobile or computer.
Hey - we are speaking of people who became pensioners - so they must have been working somewhere - and where do you not need a computer nowadays? So: people who where managers, actors, mothers, whatsoever - suddenly are depicted as Rip van Winkle? König Rotbart? Having overslept the technical inventions of the last decades???
"Pretty silly", I say.
You are a great person, Joanna, you are a role model - don't play "Little silly me, not wanting to annoy big mighty husband". You are worth far more than that.
And: Old is not a synonym for stupid.