Weird Painters, Course Planning, Andrew Wyeth, and Lilies.

Well, the creeping painters have crept away and gone. It's all very puzzling. The landlord told us that the building would be completely spruced up over a 2-week period, but all that seems to have happened is that some guys came in for a few days, painted the BACK of the building with some kind of toxic substance that had both hubby and I coughing till out throats were raw, then left again. The whole building needs repainting, but they just painted the back wall, which no one can see because it is two meters away from the back wall of the building next door. Even the people next door can't see it, because there are no windows on that side of their building! I think it must all have been some kind of tax dodge. Maybe the toothless 85-year-old who was struggling with the scaffolding is my landlord's brother or something.

I am super-busy at the minute designing IELTS courses for some universities. Then when they are finished, I go out and teach them. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I have been up till the early hours tonight scanning textbooks and mailing the scans to my office email so that I can work on them tomorrow. I am absolutely knackered.

Not content with buying an exciting, life-changing book on lighthouses last week, I bought another tome on Monday - this one is an illustrated autobiography of one of my favourite artists, Andrew Wyeth. I like him. He is dull like me. He paints pictures of drystone walls and buckets. I love his stuff. The pictures relax me. I can stare at them for hours, perhaps because there is absolutely nothing happening in any of them, so you find yourself just sitting there waiting. Quite like my life, actually. That sums me up in a nutshell. The waiting woman. Like waiting for Godot. Oh no, there I go rambling again.

I had a pleasant Sunday at the lily festival at Yasukuni Shrine. That's the place everyone is always complaining about because it enshrines class A war criminals. Well, I just went there to look at the irises which were arranged in pots around two old blokes in a shed. I took lots of pictures (naturally). An elderly lady, who was arranging the pots, came over and told me that the flower I was taking pictures of at that time was very rare - the "Eagle's Talon" lily. And when I looked at it, it really did look like an eagle's talon, as you can see:

Well, that's about it. You've been lucky so far. I haven't quoted anything from my lighthouse book. Maybe next time...