Sunday at home
Jack
I needed to paint the laundry room/alcove (which means the gecko couple
will have to move elsewhere for awhile)and the kitchen; then clean the
seagull poop off the balconies.
Lucky me five minutes after I got up the water conked out. Now in the
summer it is sometimes rationed, and occasionally without much notice.
But October? Then I wondered if I'd paid my water bill, but then no
one in Portugal would come around punish malefactors on the weekend.
In any case, I was spared for only three or four hours. I heard the
water gushing from one of the faucets I hadn't closed, and turned with
heavy heart to the painting.
Wowie! I told the lady in the paint store: I want the same yellow as
houses are trimmed with. The color is impossible to describe - imagine
a daffodil getting electroshock treatments. Vibrant is not the word.
I think from now on a 40 watt bulb will light the area very nicely.
Seagulls are a beautiful nuisance. Not a rain cloud on the horizon, so
I guess that means sloshing the balconies down with buckets of water.
I haven't seen the storks that were nesting on a chimney not too far
away for a couple of weeks. Where do storks go? Africa, I suppose.
The distant hills are looking greener now that summer is over. And
they bay seems to have more sailboats now than in the summer.
When I lived on Madeira I would get into town by coming down the
hillside through a banana grove and vineyard via a path that led down
winding stairs through the parish town of Sao Joao. One day as I was
walking down a lane there I heard someone singing Mack the Knife from
Weill's Threepenny Opera in Portuguese. Just a guitar accompaniment,
and something else in the background - accordion maybe. Heard it a
couple of days, and the guy seemed real good. Then one day I heard him
singing another song from Threepenny. At that point I became unsure if
it was someone entertaining himself or a recording. Just now I heard a
man (or a recording?) singing Weill's music in Portuguese again. There
is a cluster of connected small abandoned houses a street away, with
just one cottage in the cluster still occupied, though in the middle of
the group is a garden of gorgeously flowering mauve bougainvillea. It
sounds as if the music is coming from there. Very exotic to hear Weill
in Portuguese, but then the language can have a raw edge similar to
German.
Back to painting.
Jack
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
James A. Chamblee
Jack <ke...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Seagulls are a beautiful nuisance. Not a rain cloud on the horizon, so
>I guess that means sloshing the balconies down with buckets of water.
You need to purchase a plastic owl, and install it on your balcony, high up,
where the seagulls can see it.
Seagulls avoid owls. Yacht people keep owls in the rigging to avoid seagull
poop on the poop deck.
>Back to painting.
You should be painting with oils or watercolors; not with latex.
Regards,
Jim