THE FIRST THING

When I wake up in the morning it's still dark and the first thing which comes into my mind is, why do we have this winter time, now it's 8 am and in summer it would be 9 and already daylight. Strange logic, because in the evening it's dark at 5 pm and summertime would be 6 ! But this is not always the first time what I think. 

Mostly I try to make a plan for things I would, could, and should do ! That's usually my first thing which moves slowly in my brain. And then I realize that besides staying home and try to put some order in my million photos, try to write when my head is empty or watch a movie. For household scores I don't make plans because I know I won't keep them and with the promise to mysellf I would comfort me and say, you do it tomorrow. Of course there are things they have to be done this very day and that of course I do.

Today for example I have no special plan I wait for Maria the cleaning lady who arrives at 8 am still in the dark. Since the never ending lockdown I don't get up before 9 when it's daylight ! So once a week I can watch the sunraise, which mostly doesn't raise but only gives me light to turn off the electric light.

 

When I saw a beautiful sunrise for the very first time here in our new home I thought I should always get up, but when the days become longer I have to set my alarm clock to see the sun raise.
Then it's better to watch sunsets because they are also beautiful and to a decent time. Anyway when I sort out my photos I sometimes don't remember if its a sunrise or a sunset !

I switch on the TV for the News while I am waiting for Maria and as each day I see a graphic with numbers and arrows that show how many dead, how many infected and how many have been discharged from the hospital. The vaccinations started here in the retirement homes and the medical staff. Now they have to discuss for a while where the vaccination centers should be installed. Meanwhile we are still under curfew at 10 pm and all restaurants and hairdressers are closed. Our politicians who should look like Hippies by now, are always well groomed like cats (strange).  They probably all have a wife at home who is a hairdresser.

This post was the first thing I did this morning and now I think about another plan for today.

More participants here

RESTAURANTS IN CORONAVIRUS TIMES

What bothers the most the Belgians is that the restaurants are still closed. The lockdown is not yet finished. The Belgian is a gourmet and doesn't bother to spend a fortune for a meal and usually also spends hours at table.

The restaurants suffer terribly because of the lockdown and probably quite a lot of them are near bankrupcy.

Some restaurant owners however let play their creativity and try to adapt their rooms leaving enough space for the chairs at the tables to respect the rules. As it is impossible to eat with a mask unless you do it like the Arabian women and lift the mask and quickly shuffle the food in your mouth let the mask down again and eat !

As the people have to sit  alone and it is not very nice if you can't see each other, a Dutch restaurant had a good idea and created these glasshouses, where their gourmets can eat in peace and see each other. It then looks almost normal.



at two in one house and a Plexiglas between them. No way for the naughty virus to disturb the dinner ! And it even looks quite cosy.



Another restaurant or café had another nice idea, the guests sit in the middle of a tyre on a chair and with this system the distance is guaranteed !



An other one looks more classical the chairs are placed in the right distance and the places are for two people also devided by a Plexiglas.

I think the Plexiglas producers make their fortune with the Coronavirus and the masks and gloves and steril coats producers too !

What is luck for one is misery for the other !

phase 2

Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - ch

WASH YOUR HANDS !!

Wherever I go these days, in all shops or households you stumble over  

Dettol Instant Hand Sanitizer.

On Television they show you how to disinfect your hands and how important it is to have the hands clean !


The notice is quite easy :

Press nozzle gently to get Dettol Liquid Hand Wash on the wet hands. Rinse. Dry off.

Please pay attention to the word "gently" otherwise you will disinfect in one shot, your arms and half the body and probably also the furniture behind you !

If you go shopping and the young students spray the caddie handle before they give it to you, it's better to stretch out your hands if you don't want to be disinfected from top to bottom. We all get a disinfected caddie to keep the distance with your neighbor shopper !  the notice continues with the advice :

- Avoid contact with eyes. Therefor don't look in the sprayer if the hole is open or closed, it's better to direct the sprayer against a wall or in the air !

- In case of contact with eyes rinse with plenty of water. If with all these precautions you still get the disinfectant in your eyes, follow the advice, because your eyes don't need to be disinfected, it would rather make you blind for a while.

- If swallowed/ingested seek medical advice immediately and show this container or label.

If ever you take the bottle by mistake for a drink hurry to the next hospital. In case you are still alive they will pump out your stomach. (at least I think so I never tried)

- Use only as directed (this is the most important sentence in the whole notice)

Under no circumstances ask your doctor to follow the advice of a certain politician, who suggested injecting an unspecified disinfectant into the lungs of covid-19 patients, if you don't want to land on the next cemetary ! 

Anyway I have to say that my hands have never been so clean in my whole life ! I hope I didn't wash my fingerprings away, although I don't think I will need them in the near future.










Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS Promp

A NEW EXPERIENCE DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS

Because of the world wide confinement due to the Coronavirus, everthing is closed, schools included except food shops.

In the majority part of Europe it is a problem that all schools are closed because they don't have an appropriate equipment to give lessons via internet in video conferences.

I was very surprised when I heard from my son that in Amsterdam, Toby my 9 year old grandson uses Dad's old laptop to practicise and learned very quickly how to use it to attend virtual classes of his school.

Three times a week the class and the teacher are united on the screen and she gives lessons. The children are then given homework to do.

The parents put them in the School's mailbox and the teacher picks them up from there. I think this is a very good method, but probably impossible to practicise on the countryside or in little villages.

I think once the Coronavirus crisis is over, we all will have learned a lot and will see many things in another way. We will realize what is really important in our lives and what not. The world will turn completely different. How, nobody knows, as it is the first time in history that we are all sitting in the same boat, not only one or two countries or two parts of the world, this time the whole world is concerned and the whole population lives under the general lockdown.


Toby in his virtual class



Dad also works from home ! So they are both in his office and work together !

Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - practice

CORONAVIRUS - JOINT TOGETHER WITH HUMOR

It probably began in Italy the first victim of the Coronavirus In order not to stay all day in pajamas and also to entertain neighbors and friends, a  game has appeared all over the world and more and more people from all countries joined in.

In these times of confinement against the coronavirus somebody had the idea to dress in outfits as chic as possible ...... to take out the rubbish bins.



A bus driver in Glasgow, Scotland, posted a photo of him taking out his trash in a kilt with a bottle of whiskey. A woman shared the photo of her husband rolling the trash in the snow in Canada, with a Superman t-shirt, a wig and a red towel as a cape, and slowly, slowly more and more nationalities joined in.  I wonder if they do this to honor the garbadge man who also are confronted every day with this monster Virus.

Reading our Newspaper I found a whole reportage about this. Maybe it's not yet so well known as the  daily applauses and concerts in the evenings at 8 pm, in honor of the medical staff and nurses, but it starts ! I'll ask Mr. G. to take out our trash in his tuxedo !

The future

Linking to Linda.G. Hills SOCS-joint

BESIDES ME .... MY PHONE

While I am writing,  just besides me is my smartphone. The reason is that I spend a lot of time on the phone. We are all locked up because of the Coronavirus and can only go out shopping for food or to the pharmacy.

Therefore for the moment my smartphone is my only connection to my friends and family, as my family lives in Amsterdam and we are not allowed to travel to another country. With my friends it's a bit different we all live in the same town, and my two best friends not far, so that from time to time we can go out for a walk together and sit together in our gardens, always respecting the distance of 1.50 m (4.11ft).

I think we all have never lived such a situation and that's why my phone is always besides or with me.

Sometimes I think that I am playing in a film and not the best one. Everything seems to be so unreal, like being stopped and asked where I am going. Has not yet happened to me but to younger people because they were 4 instead of two sitting in  the same car. Two per car are allowed unless you have a very big one where the allowed distance can be kept. Public buses only take 5 people per Bus. 

The good thing is that people who never greeted each other suddenly turn out to be human beings and are very helpful. My husband who is Italian watches each day the RAI the Italian TV channel.  Italy is the country in Europe which the Virus loved the most.

What I admire is the Italian population, they are really united in their misfortune and very brave,  and each evening they are singing on the balconies in honor of the medical staff.

When I think that today I can take my phone and call my little grandson, see him, speak to him and show him things, while when I was a child I had to write to my grandma once I could write but that was not so easy, then buy a stamp and put it on the envelope, walk to the mailbox and then wait for the answer ! This usually lasted nearly a month if she replied immediately it was in the 50th !

So I am thankful to have my phone just besides me, which helps me to keep contact with everybody and not feel too isolated.


Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - Beside me

BELGIANS IN QUARANTINE

For the past few weeks, we had all been sitting behind our TV and we were watching with more or less interest the development of a Virus which reigned in China and which was called Corona Virus. We made a lot of jokes because it's also a well known brand of beer.

But then it went down to the wire, and we started to think it'll become a very uncertain month that we've got ahead of us.

 Indeed the Virus started to move and spread out. 

The first country which was heavily hit was Italy with the result that the government decided to shut down the whole country, no restaurants, no hotels, no shops, only food stores, no market no, meetings, no sport activity in fact no social life at all anymore then sitting home and washing your hands.

Some people wear masks when they went out. But despite all the precautions it arrived in France, in Spain, and all the other European countries followed and of course also our little Belgium.

Since today we have the same rules like in Italy. We are not allowed to go into a restaurant or a bar, to the theatre or a cinema, to the market or to a football game etc. The schools are closed and the Universities too, but students can follow their courses on internet. Fortunately the nurseries remain open and there is also a daycare for young school children whose parents are both working and have nobody to take care of the children.


The virus looks rather beautiful

As soon as this decree was out, people rushed to the shops to buy food. It was like in war, people lined up in front of stores and a reporter said in the news : "I saw a line of 150 caddies before the opening of a supermarket. Never seen by some regular customers who come to do their shopping quietly. Some people said to me, I have never seen that .."

The shelves were empty especially pasta and rice and two women were fighting for the last loaf of  bread ! A friend of mine had filmed the scene, it was really funny if the situation wouldn't be so bad.

I will do what I am told, wash my hands and keep one meter away from the person I am talking too. To make a joke I took a meter with me and measured before I talked to Nicole.

It's better to take it with humor then sitting in a corner and imagine the worst.
This is only the start, but we try to keep our life as normal as possible with our Scrabble, this is private, unfortunately no painting, as the retirement homes are closed too, but we will find  another activity all in private of course because museums are also closed.

We have in total 556 infected people and two dead, one 90 and one 76 years old. For a country with about 11 million inhabitants it's probably quite a lot.

And you know what is badly missing because people snatched it from the shelves .... Toilet paper !!

What a strange time !





Linking to Linda G.Hills SOCS - Wire

ARTHUR HAS LEFT

Arthur as a kitten same size as the remote control, he brought us as gift this enormous cord bone from the neighbor's dog, he loved to eat and to steal from plates, he even loved babies and toddlers and he loved me.

I had forgotten to figure out a life without my cat Arthur. 18 years he lived with me, got on my nerves, annoyed the neighbors, went with the mailman from mailbox to mailbox and was the most social cat I have ever known. He loved  guests, the more the better, he helped workers in the street and neighbors in their garden, digging holes. He stole steaks from the guests plates, ate an apple pie during the night, liked to drive in a car and climbed in all open cars. I heard from neighbors that he slept in their beds ! He was a celebrity and everybody loved him.

So today it was an awful day when I had to call the vet and asked her to put him asleep for ever. He was at his end, he was sleeping when she came and didn't even wake up. We sat beside him and after the final shot his heart stopped to beat. It was the end.

Now we have to learn to live without his loud meows, and all the naughty things he had done and which made us laugh so much. He was such a funny cat. It will take a long time until we get used that he is not longer between our feet, but he will stay forever in our hearts.


Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - Figure out

THE METAL DETECTOR

It's always difficult to find a gift for a 9 year old boy, who on top is your grandson. When my son was 9 the toys he selected were completely different with what is on the market now and as a reasonable grandma I didn't want to buy him a modern object without falling into the computer game section.

I knew that he loved to put things together and suddenly I had a perfect idea which combined an outside and inside object, a metal detector !

The detector was delivered in pieces which had to be put together and when it was finished, he had a metal detector. Of course he had to try it out immediately and inspected our whole house. In the bedrooms no suspect noise was heard, but under our living room the detector started to make a loud noise !



I told Toby the whole living room must have at least gold under the floor and that we would find a treasure ! Unfortunately the treasure turned out to be the iron bars on which the living room was built.

No chance I told Toby when I come to visit you we will go along the sea and on the beach we will certainly detect coins and other metallic things and who knows maybe the treasure which he hasn't found under our living room.



Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - ect

CHEEK KISSING

When my parents moved to Brussels, I was wondering why all people kissed each other 3 times on the cheek, starting on the right, then the left and then the right. Everywhere and everybody, except maybe your cleaning lady but not even that. In the morning cheek kissing started at school and by the time you had kissed yourself til the last pupil, it was time for class.

When I was invited I had to kiss the cheeks of the parents of my friends, the grandma, uncle and everybody who was in the house. Later on when I started working it was the same at work after a few days, the cheek kissing started, even with the general manager when I knew him better.

I started art school and it was the same people I didn't even know were kissed on the cheek and in aqua gym the same. Getting older I refused during winter time because of colds and flus, but some people still insisted although I tried to step back.

First time in Italy it was even worse ! Normally it was 5 times you had to kiss the cheeks but some had reduced it to 4. Honestly I didn't like it but I didn't want to be unpolite.

In France it was also 4 times but they started on the left cheek so I had to get used to that. Some younger once got lazy and kissed only once.

50 years later when I visited friends in Germany where when I left nobody kissed nobody on the cheek, eventually the family, now they kissed too ! Fortunately only once, sometimes two, probably those who had travelled abroad.

Apparently cheek kissing has spread over Europe, the worst are the Russians in my opinion, because they kiss on the mouth, at least I have seen pictures.

There is even a Cheek kissing culture in Wikipedia !

Linking to SOCS - cheek

HOW TO PACK A SUITCASE

Going on holidays involves packing of a suitcase, I mean at least one. In the past I prepared the suitcase several weeks before departure for the three of us. Then I thought that's stupid because each time one or two days before I unpacked everything, because I didn't remember what I had put in the suitcases.

Meanwhile I have learned to make my life easy. I prepared a list with all things I have to take with me and one day before my departure I pack my suitcase and cross out the item I had put in. This way the suitcase was quickly packed, but I still managed to forget a little thing, but as I never went camping in a completely isolated place, I could by the missing thing in the next shop.

I stated that from my friends everybody has his own way to pack ! One starts (really !) three months before departure, packs, unpacks, change clothes add things, take things out and is a nervous wreck when finally the day of departure comes.

Another washes everything and the night before departure throws what she thinks she would need in her suitcase and if she misses something, she says "I am not going in a desert".

Then I have one who irons everything possible and wears only clothes she doesn't take along. She even irons her socks and underwear. On her list is written where to put the underwear (left side) the pullovers (right side) above thinks which could wrinkle and of course her iron ! She also takes shoe creme with her (and wears sandals) and a whole pharmacy as if we would go in the jungle from Aspirine to anti itch, everything was there except a blood reserve.

I also once travelled with a friend who was so tired before leaving that she had packed 10 pairs of socks, forgotten her underwear and onlyhad one cardigan and a bath suit. And she wondered that her suitcase was so light and empty. She had to buy the things she needed once we had arrived.

Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - Pack

A CALL FROM SANTA CLAUS

The "last call" sounds a bit like a good bye forever, which I hope I won't
get so soon !

But I have another rather funny story. I had just started to work in a Belgian company where we were two employees, one for the accounting and I for the rest and the boss of course. We were selling leather coats and jackets and had also a few models to work for us and a whole working room where the women were sewing the pieces together.

I had just started to speak a quite fluent French but lots of words were missing and as I had also to answer the phone, I sometimes had difficulties to understand what the person on the other end told me.

One day it was beginning of December and I had a man on the phone who said that he was Santa Claus and wanted to speak to my boss. First I thought it was a joke but it didn't sound so and I put the conversation through. I told my boss "Santa Claus" is on the phone, which made him hesitate a bit probably thinking I had misunderstood, but then took the phone. Afterwards  I heard him and all the others laughing their heads off !

In fact we have a town in Belgium which is called St. Nicolas and the guy who phoned had given me his name and had said that he called from St. Nicolas. All I understood was St. Nicolas and as it was around December 6th it could have been true that a Santa Claus called. Anyway I hadn't thought at all of this Santa Claus and the town. Long time after my boss still told everybody that I had put him Santa Claus through the phone !




Linking to Lnda G. Hills SOCS - The last call

HAPPY RETIREMENT

Your prompt for #JusJoJan and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “movie title.” Take the title of the last movie you watched (just the title, not the premise of the movie), and base your post on that title. Have fun!

The title of the last movie I saw in a cinema was "Joyeuse Retraite" which means "HAPPY RETIREMENT"

When I hear women talking about retirement of their husbands I noticed that the retirement is not so happy at all ! The most difficult thing is that she has to get used to have him in her feet the whole day around and he if he has no special hobby is turning around like a tiger in its cage.

To keep himself busy he suddenly is very interested in how a broom is used, where to start with the vacuum cleaner or how to peel the potatoes ! Not that he wants to take over these chores ! Far from there, but as he thinks he is a household specialist he as to give instructions of how to use these utensils or work efficiently. As in his head everything is theoretical and in her head practical, this brings troubles and quarrels. Suddenly he is surprised that the floor becomes dirty when you come in with dirty shoes and that the bed has to be made every day if you don't want to sleep in an unmade bed. For him of course it was made every night when he went to bed. 

It takes some time until both parts come to an agreement. Some man think it is totally normal that he enjoys retirement life, while she also retired, has suddenly more work to do if he sits the whole day and watches TV and waits for meals.

Some men want to help but are not allowed, because she of course does everything better. Others think that cleaning and working in the household is not a work for men.

Apparently it takes more or less 3 years until the couple, often married since 40 years or more find a compromise to live in peace together or they just divorce, that happens too !







Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - Last Movie

COMMITTING SUICIDE - THREE WORDS OF A SENTENCE

 The rules for the prompt of this week are :

1. Grab the closest book to you when you sit down to write your post.
2. Open it to a random page.
3. Locate the first complete sentence on that page.
4. Use the first three words of that sentence to start your post, then take it from there–write whatever comes to mind.

This "Stream of Consciousness Saturday"is a bit special for me, but I follow the rules :

I try to grab the closest book while sitting down to write my post. But there is none. No books at all, because I prefer to read (if I have the time) the books in my Kindle.

Therefore I grab my Kindle and open a random page in the book I am just reading.  I locate the first complete sentence on that page.

The first three words of that sentence are : "Après avoir pris quelques notes sur ses tentatives de suicide ......"

I think I better knit my story in English ! Don't think I can't count until three, but if I take only three words they make no sense at all. Now I had the choice, either continue in French and maybe not all people will understand my "book" or translate and knit an English story around.

Translated the "three words" mean : After taking some notes on his suicide attempts ..... I never thought that he would really commit suicide. But he did ! He choose a nice strong cord, fixed it on a beam in the horse stable, put the cord around his neck, climbed on a chair, looked at the horses and kicked the chair aside. The horses didn't mind, they continued to eat their food, they didn't even look up. And he had taken care of them for so long and with so much love. In his last thoughts he had to realize that the horses were ungrateful, then his neck broke and he died.



Police investigation after the suicide




linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS -

MY CATS AND OWLS

From the first time I saw an owl in a zoo I don't remember where, I fell in love with these birds. They looked in my opinion,  exactly as my cat Rosie, they have the same huge eyes.

I also found that owls have the same expression as a human and I could have observed these animals for hours ! I also was impressed that owls don't need eyes in the back of their heads to see what's behind them — they can just swivel their heads all the way around. In fact, many owl species, can rotate their heads 270 degrees in each direction, which means they can look to the left by rotating all the way to the right, or vice versa ! That made me jealous, I wished I could do that too, but I could try as long as possible it never worked. It would have been so practical to cross a main street, or even more interesting for neighbor watch, I could be a private detective, or when I was in school easily see what others wrote ! What a dream !

When I visited a Farmer's fest in the UK there were many owls. I didn't want to go elsewhere, I just wanted to observe these amazing animals.




Owls



and my little private owl



Linking to Linda H. Hills SOCS - OW

A TERRIBLE END OF THE YEAR

I had called my friend Mireille the one who is half blind, to ask her if she could come for Scrabble on Sunday instead of Monday. She had a little voice, and I thought she had caught a cold, but not at all ! She had celebrated Christmas Eve at her daughter's and she would have been happy if ....

When they arrived home in their apartment located on the 4th floor of a building which had one apartment per floor,  and opened the door, they were surprised that the living door was closed, they always leave it open for the dog. And then they saw the surprise of the year ! Burglars had been visiting their apartment ! All drawers were open and the content dispersed on the floor, same with the cupboard doors, it was a real mess everywhere because they had emptied all wardrobes only the kitchen drawers were undamaged.

Mireille called her daughters who quickly arrived because she couldn't see what was stolen, while her husband alerted the police. According to the police and the insurance company, the burglars were not some youngsters but real professionals, because the doors were all secured with special locks and you need a special equipment to open them. Apparently they had opened the door of the utility room which was besides the elevator and from there had opened the door which led to the balcony, and then forced the window door and got into the living room.

They had taken only very valuable things, like jewelry, and three watches in gold stemming from her husband's grandfather and great grandfather.

Of course they were under shock it was not so the value of the jewelry but they had belonged to their parents and were irreplaceable.

It had already been a bad year for them, but that the year would end like this they never had imagined ! And normally the apartment was so secured, nobody had never thought it would be possible to get in there !


Linking to Linda G. Hills - SOCS-Year

BEING A SINGLE WOMEN IN THE 19th CENTURY

In the past when a young girl from the upper class was 18 years old or even younger the family was looking for a suitable husband because she had to marry  ! She needed a husband who took care of her, when the parents had passed away because she was not allowed to work for money only for charity. She couldn't stay single either this was just impossible for her reputation. There were not many choices for women at that time, she could become a private teacher, or living as an old maid with a member of her family but lots of parents just put the girl in a convent her whole life, at least there she was dressed and fed. A rather very sad perspective if it was not her own choice. Single women had a hard life except when they were born very rich and were the only child. But for the majority it was a rather sad existence when they were average looking and not a beauty.

Fortunately today for a woman being single is no longer a lack of options – but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day happily and decide for yourself what to do and how to live. 





Husband hunting ....






Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS - ingle

A DANGEROUS INTRUDER

When our son was little we always went to the Lake of Garda in Italy to visit my mother in law who lived in the next town. We didn't have to carry our huge tent each time, we just left it in her basement and often when we arrived it was already put up by friends. The reason was that we were directly at the lake when we got up.

One night I woke up because I heard a loud, heavy breathing outside the tent and a rustling noise. It was as if somebody turned around our tent. I got a little scared waked up Mr. G. and told him that somebody is around our tent. Now he heard a loud noise too. As a brave man who has to defend his family he took a torch and went outside ..... and found himself nose to nose with a big dog who friendly waggled with his tail. He petted the dogs head and returned to bed and then we had to laugh. What a dangerous intruder !

The next day he saw the dog again, apparently it was the dog of the camping owner who made its rounds during night !





Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS-Loud

THE STORY OF A KEY

Besides the fact that I misplace keys often and loose a lot of time because I have to search where they could be, another story suddenly came into my mind concerning a key

I was probably 5 or 6 years old and lived with my parents in a little town near Frankfurt together with my father's mother, my grandma, the grandpa, his sister with husband and my two cousins, and an uncle who had just came home from a war prisoner camp in Siberia where he had been a prisoner from 15 years old til 25 exactly 10 years. They all lived with my grandparents because they had all  lost their homes due to the heavy bombing of Frankfurt. I didn't know  that my parents had lived in Frankfurt in an apartment which was completely bombed out and had disappeared when my father came home from work. My mother was with me, a baby, on the countryside staying with her parents.

My aunt and uncle had the same destiny, their home was also completely destroyed and they also had lost everything. Fortunately the house was very spacious but apparently all the adults living together was not so ideal. We children didn't realise, my cousins were one year younger then me and the other a year older we avoided as much as we could the adults, because there were often fights.

My aunt was a very kind person (to me) but apparently a devil to the adults, she got hysterical attacks, screamed, slammed doors, ran away, came back etc. I personally didn't care, my mother tried to protect me by hiding these facts as much as possible, but that wasn't easy living all so close together. Anyway I didn't understand why my aunt behaved that strange and wasn't afraid either, I think it seemed normal to me.

One day she really got completely crazy, screamed and ran around and then into the kitchen slammed the door behind her and locked the door with the key opened the window and threw out the key. After a while we heard her hammering at the door because she wanted to get out, and called my uncle who tried to calm her down. We children watched from far wondering what would happen now and how she would get out.

My grandma saw us standing there and send us in the garden to look for the key. We did this with great pleasure and were looking for the key everywhere. It reminded us a bit like looking for Easter eggs. We were very eager to find the key so that my aunt could get out because she was still hammering at the door. My father shouted that she should jump out of the window, which was not possible because it was far too high, but he was so furious.

We checked every centimetre of the front yard and finally my little cousin found the key under a fir close to the trunk. She picked it up and showed it proudly to everybody. My uncle grabbed it out of her little hands, stormed into the house and opened the kitchen door. My aunt fell sobbing in his arms and the rest I don't remember.

Only years later I understood how terrible it must have been for them to all live together after the trauma of the war. They had lost everything, just like my parents not even a plate or a fork was left. My aunt suffered from  terrible panic attacks,  because she had been standing in the street where a few meters farer a bomb went down. For days she couldn't hear anything.

When I remember this time fortunately not too much, I get an oppresssed feeling. As a child I felt that there was something wrong without knowing what it was. It was a life full of fear for the adults, the daily fight for food, the American occupation, the fear that they would break into the house when completely drunken and looking for girls.

This key under the fir, in the little hand of my cousin I will certainly never forget.



My two cousins and I (right)


Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS-key

WHAT SHADE OF COLOUR ?

After having done my shopping, I stopped at my friend Nicole's for a cup of coffee. Her flat was in a mess because she had her toilet renovated. New toilet, new tiles, new lights and of course repainting of the walls in white. But which white ?? Believe it or not, but there are so many shades ! As there is also a white inbuilt wardrobe in white,and the tiles in white, we had to find the same shade of white to match !

There was a slightly yellow white, a grey white, a blue white, a pink white, a creme white and a white white ! We looked at the card with the different shades, names and reference numbers.



I immediately excluded a grey, blue and pink white, because grey looks dull, blue cold and pink is old fashioned. Nicole agreed. As she wanted the window sill in black tiles, and the other tiles were a very light white I suggested the white white which would match the tiles and the black window sill.

Nicole unfortunately has no imagination at all she needs facts ! I looked around and saw a little table standing there it was exactly the white I meant. So Nicole carried it in the toilet and held it against the wall to see if the white white matched the white of the tiles. Yesss ! It did, at least in my eyes.

Nicole belongs to those people who when they have chosen something start to hesitate, choose hundreds of other things and at the end come back to what they had chosen in the beginning, while I see something flash on it and don't change my mind anymore. Satisfied she put the table back and agreed with me. Good thing done.

When I came home I saw my usually white cat Arthur rolling himself in our red gravel ! After that his white shade was a pink white ! Even on Arthur it didn't look that nice !







linking to Linda G Hills SOCS-Shade