Hyacinths

Why how very Laura Ashley of me, how old-fashioned and middle-aged.

Last year, when my grandson Teddy was born, I sent Sue some flowers. I wanted blue of course and the ones I liked best were an entire bunch of blue hyacinths in a vase. These were duly delivered ahead of my own arrival but were still going strong when I got there. And my goodness they filled the house with scent. They had to be kept in the hallway so that when sitting in the front room you weren't overwhelmed by them.
A hyacinth bouquet rather than Hyacinth Bucket.

Yesterday I went to Home Depot to get some potting compost. I'm ahead of them, they really haven't got their plants section up and running after the autumn planting. But what they did have were some rather unhappy looking hyacinths, so I bought some. Whenever I go past the dining area, what the Germans would call an 'Essecke', I catch the scent and it brightens my mood.

The past few days have been the most difficult to be so far away. Alex's operation has tugged me very hard. Even in my thirties, when I was in hospital in pain, I wanted my mum. Not that she'd have been the slightest help, I just wanted her there. Now, thinking of my own grown-up baby girl so far away and in pain tears me up.
Where was King Solomon to recognise my sacrifice?

Hmm...let's have some hyacinth perfume.

I find very few TV children tolerable, but the one I really like is the middle girl in 'Medium', Bridget. I love that she has such a different take on things, that she stomps and frowns rather than pouts. She isn't cutesy, just cute.

On 'Studio 60' this week, Jordan McDeere has been stuck with a new and annoying person to deal with, Head of 'Alternative Programming' or reality TV as we know it. 'So you're the new Head of Illiterate Programming,' said Jordan, and then realises that she had said that out loud.

Kiran Matharu is apparently Britain's first female Asian sports champion, that is if you assume that 'Bend it Like Beckham' was just fiction. But the amusing thing about the interview with her was when she gives us an insight into 'dressing like a woman'.

"There's a lot of lesbians [in golf] - 70% or something silly. I'm not sure if it's 70% but I've heard - check it, cos its true."

Would it worry her to be mistaken for a lesbian?

"I won't be, though, will I? Cos I've got, like, Pumas - that's the most trendiest stuff you can wear in golf now. I'll be wearing that."

So, look in your wardrobes, or wherever you keep your shoes, if you have Pumas in there and you want to be a lesbian or thought you were one, unlucky mate.

You remember at school learning how Henry the second inadvertently caused the death of Thomas à Becket by stamping his foot and crying,
'Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?' yeah, well, this has nothing whatsoever to do with that, but for pity's sake, David Caruso, who's writing his lines in CSI Miami? Will no-one rid him of these pathetic lines? Are the writers having a good old laugh behind his back? It's like the great McGonagall, the poet whose lines caused such amusement he became a cult favourite.

So who should turn up in 'Heroes' this week, but Christopher Eccleston, he who played Doctor Who for the first one of the new series, nice jump Chris. Let's hope that Heroes, which is admittedly a fascinating series, lasts longer than Doctor Who. Oh, hang on, that's right, Doctor Who has been regenerating for like....forEVER. Oh well.

Meanwhile, back au Canada and in our very own city of Richmond, sleight of hand is...well not very caché to be honest. The city allowed, a few years back, a huge great honking casino to be built. The city pacified its citizens by pointing out that they were getting ten million a year in taxes from the casino. But, now this is strange, there is a HUGE amount of crime centred around the casino. Yes but we get ten mill in taxes from them. So how many extra police officers has this ten million bought for the city to deal with the extra crime? None. Not one? Nada? Nul point? So how much is the extra crime costing the city in terms of police time that can't be spent helping the community? Papers shuffled, beards are muttered into. And heads will roll? Probably not.

It'll take one hell of a lot of hyacinths to make them rotten eggs go away.