Steam powered internet

I just want to say, if you are contemplating using a 'dongle' for mobile internet, forget it. A dinosaur could deliver a message faster and they are dead! Have tried every which way to upload a photo this morning and just would not do it. Grrrr!
So, all that is left is for me to bore you to tears once more dear friend with Ta Da...


                                            Pemberly
                       Chapter 2
It is not to be supposed that Frederick alighted from his post chaise onto the steps of the great house to universal approbation.
His election as the future inheritor of Pemberly did not sit well with the daughters of the house and their opinions had been loudly voiced by their elder sister Jane, So named in honour of her well beloved aunt.
"Mother, are we still to be denied the freedoms and rights so long withheld from our sex when a woman, the princess Victoria is to come to the very throne of England? Rational men cannot cling to these outmoded customs! The placing of an entail directing property away from a natural inheritor denies a woman her rights and is abhorrent, it must and should be addressed by an act of Parliament to right the   wrong!"
"Be still Jane, that is as it may be  replied her mother, the prevailing state of affairs is that you and your sisters MUST marry well, moreover it is as easy to love a rich man as one who has only his personality to reccommend him, even though his family be ever so worthy. Love grows in time in the case and you have only to look to  the example of poor silly aunt Lydia to educate you on the evils of the path she chose in marrying for what she supposed to be love thus disregarding her future."
Privately Lizzie felt all of the injustice of her daughters' situation having experienced a similar imperative in her youth.
"Thank goodness I was able to see the goodness in Darcy and the evil in Wickham before it was too late, even though one had all of the virtue of it and the other the mere appearance of goodness" was her thought as she reviewed the many happy years  she had spent with one whom she had first perceived as a proud haughty man. Fortuitously for her, love had come with a large estate attached. Indeed her first  glimpse of Pemberly and its magnificent grounds had cemented the growing regard that she fostered for  its owner, the taciturn but tender hearted man whom she had loved these twenty odd years past. Lizzy could only hope such good fortune  would befall her daughters.
It is here we must enumerate and name these beauties who while having all of the cogniscence of their position in life but none of the hauteur usually associated with it were, nevertheless Darcys and proud of it. Jane we have met, a girl not unlike her namesake, possessing beauty and a calm nature but with  perhaps a little more sharpness of wit than she. Her capacity for outdoor sports was boundless and it was said that "No one sat a hunter like Miss Darcy".  Miss Darcy was admired for her energy and  and would think nothing of tramping miles in the mire in search of an interesting wildflower specimen to draw. Her energy stood her in good stead also at county balls where she was so much sought after as a dance partner and many a young swain was observed to sport a black eye gained in a contest to see who would become Jane's next partner in the waltz (waltzing being a fashion come lately to the county but much practiced during the London season).  Her unfailing good humour did not prevent her from peevishly noting that they "Had much better be using their time playing at tiddlywinks than fighting as if they were disputing the ownership of the better pack of hounds!"
During the course of the last London season she had successfully parried at least five declarations that "A chap might just shoot oneself" if his suit were not successful, a boast happily never executed to her profound relief.
Jane's good looks and friendly nature exerted a powerful inducement to these many declarations from admirers who chose to ignore  her lack of real prospects in pecuniary matters when the melancholy day of Mr. Darcy's demise should eventuate.
Still Jane would not be swayed.
"Pray do not make of my Jane an old maid" thought  Lizzy, "There is too much goodness and beauty in her to waste in a lonely spinsterhood".

Dogoo (plus stamps)

Thank you to my blog buddy in Japan, 'Senior' for sending me an interesting etegami of Dogoo (I think she is a character in a popular Japanese TV show).
Also in the envelope were the name stamps for me to use on my etegami, carved by Senior as well as a blank postcard that he has made himself using plant matter to make the paper, very clever! As you can see on this postcard the paper is a very interesting texture and colour.
Thank you very much for these, I will use them on an etegami to send to you and maybe you can put it on your blog?

As usual, a misunderstanding, Dogu, which I think the TV series  (Dogoo) is loosely based on, is a warrior woman clay figurine of the Jomon period, a Japanese national treasure.

So, I looked up Wikipedia for Dogoo and in English it is Dogu also in Wikipedia ???? Thanks Senior hope that clears that up.

Time and tide

Lawks a mighty! is it Christmastime again so soon?
Well, bah humbug, Scrooge that I am I just cannot get into the Christmas spirit. Two people in the family battling cancer, a total of forty seven days in hospital this last 12 months for me and I am just getting older and no better looking! Things have got to look up.
The BIG bright spot on the horizon is that our family in Singapore will be here for Christmas, a whole week enjoying the granddaughter I never see from one year to the next. The worry though is that they are booked on a Qantas A380 jumbo, surely they will be ultra cautious by then and all of the safety tests will be totally rigorous.

My token effort towards getting into the mood is to have made these rather festive origami earrings in all colours for friends, too bad if they don't have pierced ears. I do make a lot of stuff out of origami, mostly cards but I never seem to post them here
 I am managing to waste my time in many other ways, chiefly in fantasizing about the next chapter in the lives of the  characters I have hijacked from Pride and Prejudice. The thing has taken on a life of it's own, however I will possibly ditch the whole thing in embarrassment when I hear what other people have written on Wednesday. It sure is fun though.
Then there is the New Year greeting  etegami to think about and ponder the  many ways to draw a rabbit. Thinking, thinking.......

A picture postcard from Japan

Etegaminikki (http://etegaminikki.blog97.fc2.com/) sent me this very cute card she had made in response to my email. As well as the card there was a beautiful set of calender cards , I shall think of her every time I look at them for a whole year.
Her grandchildren love Nutella and the jar she buys is made in Australia so she made this connection!
While I do not read or speak Japanese I understand she is the person who organizes to display etegami in train carriages in her region and many people submit work for her to put in.
Sounds like a fun idea and gives commuters something to look at .
Still hassling with OPTUS over the internet connection, looks like they are upgrading our package to 500 mgb but we still haven't canceled the old service...maybe this afternoon....sigh.

There will be a short interruption to programs.............

We have (foolishly as it turns out) decided to change our internet provider and learned to our dismay that there would be a hiatus of THREE WEEKS between disconnecting from the old one and reconnecting to the new, after we had signed up.
This despite being assured by the smiling rep. from OP...er, the company that such would not be the case.I think the words seamless transition and you don't have to do a thing were uttered.
Himself is not pleased and is going around with a pained look because the company's solution to my squeals of horror was to give us an apology and free mobile broadband for the interim and it has taken us 24 hours to solve all of the problems associated with installing the software on our MACs  (OPT...oops, the company does not provide any technical support to MAC users of course).
NOT HAPPY, it is as slow as a wet week. To add insult to injury OPTU....er the company is now offering a download limit of ten times what we signed up for three weeks ago for less!!!!!!!!

I will leave you with this smiling face which bears no resemblance to my expression at the moment.

Jane Austen tragic.

Like a lot of ladies of a certain age (and some not so certain), I loooove The writings of Jane Austen.
While I am glad not to have been born in that era  (anything pre the discovery of penicillin can be as romantic as it likes but I won't be time traveling there anytime soon) I really love the language she uses and the studied way life was lived among the upper classes at that time. Leaving aside the fact that I would have probably been a scullery maid in Jane's era, the doings of the Bennets et al were endlessly fascinating to me as a younger person. However, it was not until Mr Darcy (AKA Colin Firth) burst onto the TV screen in the now famous wet shirt incident did I become a true tragic. So much so that I have just finished re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the umteenth time (on my Kindle :) How do you do a smug smiley? ) .
Well, the point of this post is that my friend Cathy alerted me to the fact that the library is having a"High Tea with Jane Austen" next week, so of course I signed up. One of the fun things they will be doing is to ask you to write an opening for a sequel to  P&P -after the honeymoon.  Rather than go for  a description of Lizzy and Darcy's early married life (and any possibly private happenings) I have jumped  20 or so years ahead, so dear reader.......

                                            Pemberly
                             Chapter One. (Draft)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young couple in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a male heir.
Thus it was with Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, but alas while their estate at Pemberly had been blessed with the birth of five beautiful, but headstrong daughters, the looked for son had failed to appear. The ensuing births of these girls had been met with stoicism by Mr Darcy but was a source of much disquiet for his still beautiful wife Lizzie whom the years had treated very kindly indeed.
It was on account of an entail placed on the estate by the late Mr Darcy senior (an otherwise kindly man who feared that the rise of female independence would ruin the country ) that Pemberly and the fortune attached to it would devolve to the nearest male relative on the death of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
In the absence of a kindly brother to secure their futures, Elizabeth held fears for what perhaps lay ahead of her spirited and accomplished daughters  all five of whom were determined to marry only for love. They  would have but a small portion for their maintenance if they took as an example  Lizzie's foolish sister, their aunt Lydia in following their heart in spite of all reasoning to the contrary.
This then was the state of affairs twenty two years after the nuptials of Elizabeth and Darcy.
It being the established custom in such cases to adopt an heir from within the family, the Darcys cast about for a likely candidate amongst the children of Elizabeth's three married sisters. The scholarly Mary her fourth sister remained happily at Longbourne still as companion and tutor to the children of her cousin Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas. She was moreover invited to dine not less than thrice a year at Rosings the country seat of the de Bourghs which now rested in the hands of Colonel Fitzwillian through his late wife the former Miss Anne de Bourgh.
An immediate and enthusiastic offer by the impoverished Lydia Wickham to allow the Darcys to adopt one of her six wild and dissolute sons was under no circumstance  to be countenanced.
The mere contemplation that an offspring of George Wickham and Lydia Bennet would pollute the shades of Pemberly saw a tight lipped Mr Darcy quit the dining room for the solitude of his study until all talk of such an abomination should cease.
Darcy could only speculate in what manner his late aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh would have greeted such an  outcome! His sister Georgiana was of course spared these speculations owing to the infamous way that Wickham  had attempted to abduct and marry her and she barely fifteen, the memory of which had led perhaps to her confirmed spinsterhood.
Unhappily for Elizabeth, Jane Bingley  her best loved sister, while the very model of a doting aunt, had remained childless. She was able then to look only to her younger sister Kitty Winton, the wife of a kindly country parson of good family to supply their want.
Mr Winton's steady guidance and maturity had made of Kitty a sober, sensible kind of woman who bore little resemblance to her younger self under the influence of the foolish, rebellious Lydia.
It was this state of affairs that saw the young, handsome Frederick Winton arrive in his twenty second year to take up residence as the putative heir of Pemberly.....................................................................

I think Jane could do something with that!
Kindly meant criticisms will be taken, all the rest of you need not bother :)

Etegami experiment.

I thought I would try out a couple of the postcards I have for etegami  to see how they reacted to basically the same drawing.
The first one is the one I ordered from Japan which has quite a bit of 'bleed'.
I am learning to control it a bit better but still can't get that 'blobby' look, Maybe I just have to accept the fact that you have to be steeped in Japanese culture from birth to 'get it'

I do like the juxtaposition of words and pictures so I think I will persevere. Another thing is that I have hooked up with some Etegami bloggers in Japan and I am enjoying that interaction at the moment. It certainly seems to be an older persons 'sport'
The second card which I bought at Kinokuniya yesterday when I went to Sydney is more like a sheet of watercolour paper and it saps the colour right out of the ink. It came out more like a conventional watercolour.

I did receive a card yesterday from a lovely lady in Japan (etegaminikki) done on watercolour paper so I guess it is not unheard of to use it.
Stay tuned for exciting developments re my initial stamp .

A bit of doggerel

doggerel: n. comic verse composed in irregular rhythm.
  verse or words that are badly written or expressed (Oxford dictionary of English)

On my trip to the country I was very moved to see an old man waving to the train, it was kind of touching and naive , something a child might do so while I was on the train I wrote this;

A Country Child
I remember as a little girl,
waving to the train
imaginings of brighter lights
dancing in my brain.
I remember as a teenager,
waving to the train,
hopes and dreams of other lives
time and time again
Now time is short, I've seen those things and
I've come home ,but fain,
my head upon the pillow ill,
it does not stop the longing still,
and waving to the train.

Sorry about that folks, had to get it off my chest. :)

Taking some leave...

The world of blogs will just have to do without me for a few days, I am off to see my darling Mum who is recovering from a big operation. Luckily my two brothers have done a fabulous job between them of taking care of her in my absence but I do want to see her before she starts a further round of treatment.
She lives about 5 hours away by train so it will take me one day traveling two days there and back on Wednesday so hopefully I will be back in reasonable health and on the internet by Thursday.
It is going to be pretty scary not being connected for four whole days, not keeping up with my favourite blogs the one consolation is that I will have my new Kindle to keep me company (an early Christmas gift from my family in Singapore, nice to have a tech savvy son who wants you to have the same experiences that he has).

I'll leave a couple of pics for you to stare at and just hum a tune 'til I get back :)
This is the garden furniture that  I painted so laboriously last week, I love the black, in a funny way it kind of disappears into the background. Phew! what a job though.

This is of a sempervivum "Pacific Red Rose" which has formed this lovely fairy ring in the pot.

 And yet another attempt at etegami.
Toodelooo Chaps.

Some good, some not so good.

The Good The Bad and The Very Ugly.
First to the Very Ugly ...... yesterday was our 47the Wedding Anniversary...how did we get so old? (I was a child bride but nonetheless).
The Bad...Two hours in the dentist's chair.
The Good...still waiting for that to happen! Just kidding, every day breathing is a good day right?

Remember that I sent off an entry to Debbie's call for autumn etegami? well here it is.

PS. an update on the veggie garden, had our first (small) meal of chard Monday along with some  rocket (arugula) and mitzuna. Yum.