The comments on the post below for Wednesday about men readers and cats continues apace.
What I want to know is this: do the majority of women have things that they don’t read because the subject matter is perceived as “a male thing”?
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Okay, this one is for Donna, who asked me to say hello to George for her.
So here he is, Donna. Well, his cottage anyway, first pix below. No, not the church, the other one, to the left.
And then there’s Richard Branson’s cottage …
And another one that was the set of several movies, including Casino Royale…
And then there was the place where the meeting was being held that my husband was attending. Note the lunch tables under the tree…
And the view they had when they looked out of the windows.
I often delve into a blog site called Writer Unboxed. Great place for writers and people who want to be writers and for readers who want to know a bit about the process. The brain child of Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton, the site now involves a number of writers, such as Juliet Marillier (who lives in my home town and whom I have recently met for the first, and I hope not the last, time).
Recently Kathleen was asking her mystery-reviewer husband what earns a poor review out of him, and he remarked: “Cats. If you have to put a cat in your book, be aware that most men will not read it.”
Okay, you guys out there. I want to know – is this really true? And if so, in heaven’s name, why?? Ladies, ask your spouses, partners, brothers, fathers, sons: do they read cats?
On the edge of Como city there is a funicular railway that goes up the hill to Brunante. From there you can walk to a Lighthouse overlooking the lake. You also get great views of the duomo and the city.
If you look carefully at the next photo, you will see the line of the old city wall, now marked by lines of trees and a broader road. The cathedral, then, was once close to the wall.
And if you look at the next photo you will see there is another church just several blocks to the left of the cathedral (built 1396-1740), which was once also within the city walls. It predates the cathedral, in fact, and is called the Basilica of San Fidele. It was built around the 6th century and rebuilt in the 11th!
And when we came down from Brunante, we stopped to have lunch at the restaurant below (panini – melted cheese and tomato and zuccini on toasted bread). Yum. Why do these things taste so much better in Italy?)
Actually Jo said something about that in her blog recently. Americans, she said, put too much onto their pizzas. She is right. Italian taste relies on freshest ingredients and subtle tastes just done to a turn – and the best of cheeses. And in Como, I think the taste might have had something to do with the scenery too…
Recently my daughter Nashii (pictured near the top of Mount Kinabalu last year) was asked to compose and record some music for the sound track of a soon to be released Hollywood movie starring Dakota Fanning. Given the way things work in Hollywood, she won’t be sure if they actually used it until the film is released…
Anyway, take a look and listen here for what she and Eric Holden have been working on with some friends as a continuation of the music done for the film. Expect an EP release in the Fall…
There are 2 tracks up on the link above, “Teenage Spaceship” and “Ocean”. Just push the button on the music player.
Little wonder I remember them.This from today’s The Star newspaper:
“Give us RM 100,000 annually or we chop down all the trees near the water catchment areas in the state.” This was the threat Menteri Besar* Azizan Abdul Razak issued to the Federal Government.
He said the state government was losing millions in revenue because they could not chop down the trees for timber. “We know it is prohibited to cut down trees near water catchment areas, but the state is losing a lot in terms of revenue.”
You know what words sprang into my mind as I read that?
Blackmail and extortion.
A man who doesn’t worry about future generations.
A man who doesn’t care if even his own constituents have clean water and clean air.
A man who has never heard of global warming.
A man who has never heard of the value of the biodiversity of the rainforest.
A man who doesn’t care if he commits a crime even though he knows what the law says.
A man who doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to govern.
The guy is from PAS, a party which is supposed to uphold religious values. Yet his idea of good governance is to threaten to trash his state?
*Translation: Chief Minister – i.e. State Premier or State Governor, in this case, of Kedah State.
1. There’s no water pressure to speak of, and the shower dribbles like a toothless old man.
2. There’s a Plaintive Cuckoo calling in the garden and a Koel (another cuckoo species) trying to drown it out.
3. I sweat sitting under the fan reading.
4. There are loads of bills sitting on the cupboard at the front door, all waiting to be paid.
5. My internet connection is FAST and doesn’t cost RM84 cents a minute (79 US cents or 13p a minute) for a connection so slow it made me want to weep.
6. Petrol (gas for you Americans) costs at least one third less, in spite of recent price increases here.
How I know I have been somewhere else:
1. I wake at 2 a.m. and want to get up and start the day.
2. Many of the bills are for astronomical sums of money.
3. I feel guilty because I hardly wrote a word all week.
And did you know that the seat space on KLM is so tight that you can’t open a laptop to work on?
I shall continue to post Como photos…