Creepy crawlies (and other wonderful things to find in your shoe)!

We finally got our first rain in ????? days the other day and it's forecast to continue for a good few days. It's not horrendous but the temperature has dropped and a couple of times a day I now go out into my garden with a large spoon to train for the annual slug flinging competition! Bloody things, I hate 'em, so I keep checking my veggies and scraping the little buggers off before flinging them into the hedge. Well them and snails!!!! I don't mind the snails so much but I absolutely hate stepping on the bloody things in the dark, or worse still, finding one inside my garden shoes that I leave outside with my gardening stuff. Eewww, snail-filled shoes - certainly not my idea of a good pedicure! I had to laugh though as I found two snails "stuck" together by my front door last night, so flicked them on to the garden. This morning when I opened the door the poor sods seemed to have just been able to make their way back on to my front porch overnight to continue "mating" and I flicked them back onto the grass again. So they made all that effort for what turned out to be an exercise in futility to me, but then I don't really know how a snail's mind works do I. Oh wait …. nah, better not got there. I'm divorced! Then the other morning I was pulling back the curtains in the spare bedroom and found a ruddy great hornet trapped between the curtain and the window. Damn, I opened that window as wide as I could and beat a hasty retreat thinking I'd managed to get rid of it a couple of hours later when I went back in there and couldn't find it. But no, when I went into the other bedroom and turned the light on there he was again, the evil looking bugger. So I shut all the doors and opened just that one window and hope I've got the bloody thing out this time as I swear it was as big as my thumb. I remember one time finding a nest on the balcony right by my bedroom window. Not knowing what to do I set fire to the bloody thing. I'm not sure if that was the best solution but they seemed to change camp sites after that!

Despite the slugs, snails and hornets, we need the rain and either way, the meme below is still pretty much spot on!

And shooting off in a totally different direction, in The Sopranos episode I was watching the other night the "guys" headed off to Naples to do business with their Italian counterparts. Of course Naples was all very beautiful but I remember going there in 1980 (on our way down the Amalfi coast and then over to Malta) and my boyfriend and I ended up spending a couple of nights in Naples. Nope, don't think I'll bother again. We got so sick of being ripped off everywhere we went and since the lira was still the official currency at the time, with way too many "000000" at the end of each figure, I'm pretty sure they had us paying over $100 for a bottle of water as we couldn't figure out the exchange rate. Then getting ripped off by the hotel owner and taxi driver (who actually ran over my boyfriend's foot) and some of the worst food I have ever eaten, I swore I'd never go there again. I remember at the end of a disgusting meal we had, the restaurant owners sent the sullen little fat kid to "wipe off our table" as we were preparing to leave (i.e. flick the crap into our laps), so then of course you have to give the "cute little fat kid" who had done bugger all evening a decent tip! Which we did of course because no way were we arguing we those guys! Actually my son went there with the school many moons ago and he said the same thing about Naples. He swore the spaghetti napolitana was just spaghetti doused in ketchup and said the food was disgusting and a rip off for the tourists. That being said, he had a wonderful time and of course Naples is in no way indicative of the rest of Italy, thankfully. One of my friend's father is from Naples (mom is Scottish) and she said that even though she is family and speaks the language, there's no way she would wear any kind of jewellery while walking out and about in Naples. So I guess the mob mentality really is still alive and kicking there!

In other parts of the globe, seeing people commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests the other night made me think of an article by an English friend of mine who was actually in Tiananmen Square when everything exploded! I can't remember all the details but she ended up being in the square quite by accident when the protests erupted. In fact, she hadn't really intended to be in China at all but was making her way to Siberia to see her boyfriend to get married there. As I say, I can't remember all the details as it was some time ago but she realized that as a blue-eyed blond she was most definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time and vividly described the absolutely electric tension! Eventually a bunch of Australian journalists dragged her to safety at the hotel where they were holing up and she said even there, in the relative safety of the hotel, the atmosphere was like sitting on a powder keg. Eventually they were all shepherded out of the country by the authorities and as she was getting on the train to leave a young Chinese man (a friend or a new acquaintance?) asked her to keep his address book on her as he was afraid what would happen to him if he was found with it. So she stuffed it inside her bra and this young man was, indeed, taken away on the train for "questioning" but was subsequently released and as they were parting ways she was able to give him his address book back, although she never knew what became of him! Now the reason she showed me the written account of her experience was because they had put out a call at work for people to submit stories to the intranet and she asked me if I thought she should submit it!!! To say I didn't think it would be a good idea would be an understatement and of course she saw my reasoning and never did publish it, but I'm so glad I got to read it. Was she foolish? Foolhardy? Or just unlucky? Who knows, but as a lady who went on to marry her Russian boyfriend in beautiful Siberia (beautiful despite the bugs that almost ate her alive), I would say she's certainly had a few experiences wouldn't you!

On a totally different subject, I've recently got so sick of transferring my to do list from one page of my diary to the next that I finally got so annoyed with myself and thought "oh for God's sake just get it done will ya"!

So I finally got round to crossing off another couple of seemingly eternally pending tasks today. I called the travel company we were going to Holland with and asked when I was going to be getting my refund and then drove down into town and fairly easily got an appointment to have the guy come out to my place on Monday with a view to replacing my ancient satellite dish. It wasn't even that difficult so why I put this stuff off I will never know!

And finally (I don't half go on don't I), as I was sitting watching the news tonight they interrupted the broadcast to cut to Trump's impromptu speech from the Rose Garden. Now as soon as he comes on all I can hear is "me, me, great, best, strongest" so I usually mute it and just watch the chest thumping without having to listen to him. I get the gist of anything important he had to say later from whichever poor sod was given the task of listening to it and breaking out the actual facts from the self-congratulatory flatulence. But one thing that did strike me was that he always has to have a whole army of advisers standing behind him. Fair enough, I suppose, as he is the President. But it then made me think of how the other psychopathic narc I had the misfortune to meet in my working life was exactly like that. She never went to a meeting alone and it would have to be a cold day in hell if she only took one person with her. No, she would usually take an entourage of about five other colleagues (thus taking them away from their work) so that she would never get "caught out". You see, she actually knew jack shit and couldn't possibly dip her toes into what should not have been unknown waters alone because then she might be found out for the fraud she was. So now I'm wondering if that's another narc trait - chest beating and taking your army with you wherever you go in order to ensure that nobody ever gets to see behind the mask!