Lighthouses, Souvenirs, Disappearing Painters.

"The rocky ledge runs far out into the sea and on its outer point, some miles away, the lighthouse shifts its massive masonry, a pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day."

From "The Lighthouse", by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

There you go. As if you needed any more proof that I am boring, I've just blogged a poem about a lighthouse. The final nail in my coffin is that today I bought a whole book about them, this one:

Every Monday, after I teach one of my private students, I go around a little market that sells cheap books, pajamas, writing paper and other dull necessities. They had a lot of books on art and interior design today, and I picked this one out. I can't say I've ever been excited about lighthouses before, (the only one I can think of offhand is the one in the John Carpenter movie, "The Fog" and perhaps the legendary John Noakes visited Bishop Rock during an episode of Blue Peter) but when I saw the photos in this, I was smitten. So I parted with hard cash and here it is. You can look forward to some interesting lighthouse facts being shared with you in my blog. Wow, I bet you just cannot wait.

Today has been a good day. My health felt okay-ish for the second day running (maybe being off work had something to do with it) and I have been out teaching private students, shopping and enjoying the hot, sunny weather.

This last fortnight has been a time for getting lovely souvenirs from people. Two weeks ago, I got these great gifts from a friend who went to Turkey - Turkish delight (now almost eaten) and apple tea:

Then today I got this great selection of seaweed and kimuchi from my private who went to Korea. The latter is for slimming - maybe it is so spicy that it goes straight through you, thereby making you lose weight through diarrhea.

And here are some treats I bought for myself - rose jellies and my favourite peppermint tea - I drink about 100 cups of this stuff a week. Great for the digestion, caffeine free and apparently reduces hairiness ( to which my husband said "Too late.")

Painting mystery - I mentioned that the painters were supposed to be in this week to redecorate our apartment building. Well, they put up scaffolding on the rear of the building on Friday and haven't been seen since. According to the schedule of work, they should have been here on Saturday and today, but there was no sign of them. Maybe one of the neighbours did them in after they were too noisy with their drills on Friday. It's trash night tonight, so I will have to check the binbags and see if any of them have feet sticking out of them.