From the depths of the night to well into the afternoon, today it rained. Long, constant drenchings of rain. There was no let up as we pottered around the house. In some areas of the UK, a month’s rain fell. If nothing else, it was testament to Freya’s bladder.
At one point, we were watching the TV after dinner and Emma heard a noise outside. She shot off, through the open door. Freya quickly followed only to be brought up short as her head felt the drops of rain. She quickly back pedalled until her head was safely inside. Back on dry land, she stood and watched, ready to give Emma her long distance support.
However, it didn’t rain all day. There was a long gap which allowed Mirinda the opportunity to take the girls to Crondall while I made moussaka.
The moussaka followed a return to the Chez Gaz brunch, a big feature of Lockdown. This was because Mirinda attended an actual, live guitar class in Hindhead and, rather than the masked staff of the Holly Bush, she took brunch at home.
The tomato segments in the photo above come from one of the two Shirley tomatoes. I don’t usually separate food types in this way, but they were quite special.
With a short break, I returned to cooking. This time it was for the moussaka, which Mirinda had ordered a few days ago. It takes so long that I always feel like an alchemist, taking bits and pieces of this and that, pouring them into a cauldron and coming up with Greek gold.
Though it’s not all work. At a few stages there’s a break while I wait for something to reach a particular stage of cooking before continuing. During those stages I often sit on the kitchen floor and play with Freya.
Today, however, when I sat down, Emma barged Freya out of the way and sat on my lap. I grabbed my phone to take a selfie. Freya wouldn’t be left out and headed for my head. The results of my photographic attempts were not very good.
The moussaka, on the other hand, was pronounced VERY GOOD.
Today, this happened
30 years ago, Berlin (and Germany at large) was re-unified. Imagine, if you can, a city with a wall down the middle, divided not just by bricks but by ideology as well.
Imagine a world where warring factions can divide communities in half without any compunction because they won a war. Imagine a world where families were not considered or political opinions within those families, when the wall was built.
Imagine, if you can, having survived a war which you didn’t agree with only to find yourself being forced to embrace Communism just because you happened to live in a particular street. And vice versa, of course. I’m sure a fair few Communists living on the wrong side of the wall would have felt a bit miffed. Mind you, they could have easily gone from West to East whereas, the opposite direction, generally led to death.
When someone is a member of a club and the club changes its raison d’être, is it fair to make members that disagree with the new rules remain members? In a world that depends so much on subjugation, it clearly must be so.
It does make me wonder though. If Communism was so amazing, how come so many people were willing to risk life and limb to leave it?
