MERHABA..

What did I say? Well, Dear Readers, I said 'Hello' in Turkish and why did I say it in Turkish, well, it is because I have noticed that there a big bunch of people reading my Blog in Turkey!

This has happened before and then they disappeared / went away from Turkey and left for foreign lands.

I envisaged then drinking delicious coffee and eating that truly most delicious yumyum and reading my Blog and I wondered wether they were Turkish or of another nationality who were visiting. 

Who knows? Anyway, they're back reading the Tales of a Parrot and I think it is polite to greet them properly.

She has much to do today and thank goodness we awoke to a clear blue sky! Yippee.. for it has been extremely, gruesomely, wet for the past two days. Such amounts of water poured out of the sky that the five litre buckets, in which the three little Calamondin orange trees live, were full to the brim on Monday! 

Yes, we have had that much rain and that was the rain that came through the trees! Goodness knows how quickly they would have filled up if they had been in the open.

But that was then and this is now. There is much to do, a trip to make going south of the river (Thames) this afternoon, to change four Library books, to make a few telephone calls, there is LOTS of ironing but that will be done later this evening and at 1.45 of the afternoon clock she is due to be at L'Oreal for the second part of her hair colour treatment.

Then to the hairdressers tomorrow. For she has tried, oh, she has tried but she is bored to tears with 'long' hair! (Dear Readers, it was only just past her jaw..) but it is goinggg.. snip, snip, onto the floor it will go and guess what? 

She has decided that, stuff it, she cares not one blanketty blank who sees she wears hearing aids! And so she is going back to having really short hair again!

Her beloved Chris has retired.. boohoo..  so she is going to a new place and has chosen a man to cut her hair. Why? Well, Chris started out cutting mens' hair and she understood exactly what she wanted and so does this man, or he appeared to!

So watch this space folks.. actually, I much prefer her hair short, it is easier to hold onto when it is this way than when it is longer and she squeaks at me if I pull it!

Got to go, I wasn't hungry this morning and I fear that she is taking me back to YumYum HQ to try to tempt me with an egg, should I humour her by having a nibble! what do you think I should do?

'Elveda'.. that's 'Goodbye' in Turkish. Cool.. no?

GeeGee Parrot.
August 27th, 2014.

THE TALE WHICH TERRIFIED HER..

The day started off so well, we woke up early, the sky was pale blue, the air fresh, there were eggs, melon and toast with which to break our night's fast and she was due to go a'jaunting up to Marylebone Farmer's Market (just behind the Waitrose on Marylebone High Street) to meet up with the other dumpling fancier, aka Debbie of Ellie's Dairy.

All of which happened, she got there at a perfect time as she said when she arrived "12.45 for a 1.00 o'clock lunch".

Debbie went off to order the delicious dumplings, they are cooked to order, then came back, she handed over swag, not from the allotment but avocados from the market and said "there's melon for pudding and salted almonds for your drive home".

But our Goaty mum friend didn't look or seem to be her normal very cheerful self and then divulged why.. a truly dreadful tale.

A friend of Debbie's had been driving along on a country road this past Saturday when she was hit head on by another car with such a force that her car was up-ended and it burst into flames. 

It then ricocheted off and struck the car behind hers causing damage to that car as well. 

Luckily, oh, so very luckily, there were other cars who saw the accident, they stopped and their occupants rushed to the flaming car, they righted it and managed, with bottles of water and a fire extinguisher, to put out the fire.

The accident emergency teams arrived, she was cut out of her car and air-lifted to a London hospital, the driver of the car behind her was also injured and was taken to a local hospital.

After the market finished, Debbie drove to see her in hospital. She has no relatives and lives in the country. She is in ICU with a broken arm, a broken leg, a broken pelvis, a broken vertabrae and a metal frame holding her right side together.

She is sedated and due to be in theatre again today for more assessment.

She received this update by email from Debbie late last night. She was shocked by the tale before she got updated but the email triggered a memory she thought long, long since gone.

Last night, for the first time in over forty years, she had the old nightmare, of being in the south of France on the mobylette and seeing the lights of the car which hit her.

It is a very wet day and the mood in our home is very sombre. 

We do not know what caused the other car to cross over onto the other side, why were they driving at such a speed, is certainly something that the Police will want to question the other driver about, at such a speed that it caused another car to turn upside down and burst into flames.

She was so lucky, that the car did not explode, that there were people who did all that they could to save her life and succeeded.. just like the people in 1969 who ran out of the restaurant and combed the vineyard until they found my mum and got her to hospital.

Please think about this folks the next time you get behind the wheel of a car, just because your car is capable of doing a hundred miles per hour, you don't have to do it. 

Speed kills and the accidents that it causes most certainly changes peoples lives. Maybe even yours.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 25th, 2014.

A Bank Holiday Market.. oh yum!

And it is true when I say good morning to you Dear Reader" for it is a good morning. The sky is blue, I admit it is a bit pale but it is still early, we had rain in the night so it smells fresh and we both slept well, so "good morning, good morning to you" is just right with which to start our day!

Those of you who know and read my Blog in an orderly fashion will know certain things about her, that she is frugal and that she supports local shops, traders and farmers markets being a couple of those things.

In return for being loyal to certain market traders we get treats and treats galore there were in store for us yesterday!

She finished sorting out the bed linens yesterday, how had those single sheets become muddled up with the doubles, she asked herself and what did those face cloths think they were doing lolling about with the pillowcases?

Whoosh, that's much better and now with the door closed on them, she whisked off the very beautiful summer bed quilt and put it into the washing machine. It was a bit of a squeeeze but it went in and she came back into the bedroom.

I have a favourite spot to perch in our bedroom, it is high on a cupboard directly in front of the door, a comfy place to doze, it also had on it, I regret to say, a large storage bag which I had been nibbling.

She caught me doing this yesterday and said "grrr" and other such disapproving noises and brought the little steps so she could climb up and see what was in the bag.

"Oh no, bad, very naughty bird, the blue Velux blanket and the red Chinese quilt, very naughty girl, please don't chew storage bags" and she pulled the bag off and it bounced on the floor, sigh.

Such a crunchy thing to nibble, it had hard edges.

Moving swiftly along and away from nibbling.. and other such naughty things.. she pulled out the quilt and the blanket and finished making the bed.

"DinkDink" went her mobile phone indicating a text had plopped into it. She picked it up and said "oh, how sweet, yum, yes please" and her fingers flashed.

She put on shoes, a rain proof jacket, took her bag, four library books, old Wicker Wheelie and having blown me a kiss, whoosh, she was gone!

To the market in the North End Road, for the text had been from Karen, our favourite fruit stall holder, saying she had ten grapefruits for a £1.00, did she want them?

So that was her first port of call.. " how sweet of you, yes please, but how come so many" she asked our lovely friend. "Hiya sweetie, it's because of the Bank Holiday, the market won't be open again until Tuesday, the market is full of wonderful bargains, go and look at the butcher's window" said Karen.

And she was right! 

After trundling through the market and having paid a visit to our most lubbly-jubbly butcher where, indeed, he did have specials galore, she hopped a bus to the Kings Road to the library.

I was asleep on the door pole when I heard them coming down the steps but instead of the usual 'bump, bump, bump' noise, it was a thump, thump, thump noise, goodness me, I thought as I flew off pole and back to the bedroom, what has she got in old Wicker?

When she was safely inside I flew to kitchen door, she was inside and old Wicker was standing there. 

Well, what was there? I knew about the ten grapefruit, she has one every morning so they were a great buy, two bunches of beetroots with their leaves (yum, I love those stalks), six ripe persimmons, thirteen small avocados in various stages of ripeness and, oh yeah! Two delicious, small fruity-tooty melons!

Yippeeeee.. the round ones, they have marks to show you where to cut, their flesh is orange and are very sweet, no, I have no idea what they are called but they are scrummy-yummy and I am mad about those seeds. The fruit totalled £5.00 and a huge bag of bones from the butcher was a £1.00.

There were also five new library books and the Autumn News Letter from the British Library.

Now you see why she supports local traders, do you think the manager of your local 'super' market is going to send you a text saying "I've got ten grapefruits for you", no, he wouldn't and besides which, those greedy folk won't be closed on the Bank Holiday.

So here we are, it is still early on this fine but quite chilly Sunday morning. At midday, she and old WW will go to meet Debbie at the Farmer's Market up in Marylebone, they will chat, eat some very tasty dumplings with Harissa (she's hoping Debbie has remembered to pack it) and she'll bring home Goaty milk with which she makes our Kefir.

And tomorrow is the last Bank Holiday Monday, we are staying at home. It is, sometimes, just the place to be.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 24th, 2014.

POST! There is very little interesting post these days.

We very seldom get interesting post, occasionally we receive a post card from a friend who is travelling in far-off distant lands, but 'post' as we used to get or know in the olden days has ceased to exist.

And due to the fact that we have a crazy (as in very seriously demented) neighbour, who lives upstairs, all her important post and packages or parcels are sent to our local branch of MailBox.

He hides or throws away other peoples' post and flowers, why, you might ask? Because he dislikes the landlord, is the simple answer. Strange but true. A charming family left because the wife could not stand him any longer and the people below him.. well.. she rolls her eyes and grimaces.

Yes, of course, there is the internet with E-Mail. But she thinks an email dropping into your inbox does not have the same effect. She likes the real deal thing plopping through the letter box, the act of opening the envelope, reading the letter and getting the news.

She has a couple of friends who are absolutely the very best at doing this, no gruesome round-robin (or whatever they are called) mass produced updates on their family with who has done what and when to whom for them. Deliciously crisp, thick paper with lined envelopes are what they use with which to write to their friends in proper ink!

Meanwhile, Dear Readers, you are wondering what started this line of thought, are you not?

Well, it started when she went looking for something in her desk, which is a lovely piece of furniture, an old Campaign Desk.

In the bottom drawer she came across the address stamp that she had made when she was living in America and in the next box, still sealed and never used, there was the address stamp for our home! 

She remembered that she ordered it when she first moved into the flat and it must have arrived when she was in hospital.

Today she is going to buy a birthday card, yes, a real, paper birthday card, she will use the address stamp on the envelope, then she will buy a stamp and post it in a postbox. 

Why? Because a real card is like a Heineken.. it reaches the place no 'fakey-makey-e-card' can ever do!

I loved getting my birthday cards and yes, I know and agree that the postage on Christmas cards is astronomical but a few birthday cards per year sent to special friends is not going to blow yours or anyone else's budget.

Thank goodness for toast.. for we are experiencing the dullest August in memory.. grey skies, cold air with bathloads of moisture just waiting to fall upon us. 

It is fairly dismal for everyone and out at the allotments, there are chillies, peppers, marrows longing for sunshine to ripen them.

Meanwhile, at home, the Basil and the tomato plants are very confused and wondering where their friend, Mr. Sun, has gone (they're not the only ones).

But toast in the morning makes life worthwhile!

She has to do a few chores and some shopping, so I will doze and may come back later.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 23rd, 2014.

She travelled for well over an hour each way.. but it was worth it!

Oh, my goodness me, she must love me very much. Why? Well, she knows I am just crazy-daisy about our home grown courgettes / zucchinis which she steams and then pan fries in olive oil with garlic and herbs but the traffic, Dear Readers, the traffic going out to the plots today was beyond gruesome!

There was a thirteen mile long traffic jam on the road to Heathrow and the Hogarth Flyover is not in use at the moment. So each trip, the one going there and the one coming back home, took over an hour and a half!

But back she came with some lovely stuff! Baby courgette balls and mini long ones, just the way we like them. 

Plums too as well as a few apples, but dreadfully sad news about the blackberries.. sad, sad news.. all that torrential rain which we have had has rotted the fruit. We are, therefore, very lucky that she picked and froze a few boxes two week-ends ago. There are a few left but nothing to get excited about.

Next week she will lop all of the plants down, haul them all away and dig out their roots, for these invasive plants have taken over about an entire plot, not all in one spot but in several places and enough is enough, they have to go, as do those old autumn raspberries.

But she has to wear very thick protective clothing and boots when she does this, she has a white scar on her upper left arm where a briar tore the skin right open.. silly plant, it may have won that battle but she won the war and she will do so again.

It takes a lot of effort and time but she has done it before, thirteen years ago, and knows how to defeat old Mr. Briar. 

But back to the food, it was all very tasty and fresh, picked less than two hours before we ate it.

On the stove there is a pot of plums cooking gently with dried mulberries and barberries, a bowl of compote on yoghurt will be her breakfast tomorrow.. slurp!

I love a good compote of fruit, she dollops a small amount on a saucer for me, I never know which to eat first, the fruit or the yoghurt?

She could hardly see her lovely boss when she called into the shop on her way home to give her a bag of edible goodies, there were a massive amount of donations piled in the shop, so she has said she will go in and help tomorrow. 

This means that I will have a quiet day by myself and will probably spend most of it dozing on front door pole but I trust that you, Dear Readers, have pleasant plans for the next few days?

GeeGee Parrot.
August 15th, 2014.

Raining Cats & Dogs.. Why do they always get the act?

Why don't Lions and Tigers or Elephants and Penguins get some work, huh? 

Anyway, that is what we awoke to, bath-loads of rain, dreary as the ground at the allotment has had lots and lots to drink and now we would like old Mr. Sun to come back.

They say that he has gone away and that Summer has ended for us in the UK, I think we have been short changed, for it is only the fifteenth of August, there are another two and a little bit of a week left of this month and what about September? 

Huh, this is boring, in fact it is very, very boring, as there are all those Apples, Blackberries, Figs, Pears and lots of varieties of Plum who would like to be ripened by old Mr. Sun and his golden rays.

So, anyway, here we are, she is tapping iPad, I am dictating from the top of sitting room door and 'thinking', only thinking mind you, of giving both Frosty Tiger and Daffy Duck a run for their money.

They have a pretty easy life those two, all they do is loll about on the top of the door. They live there most of the year, except when we have guests staying and then I am not allowed 'free range' of their room or the top of their door.

But occasionally old Beaky gets ahead of me and taking them by a leg or wing, he throws them onto the floor and I can get at the door frame. It is irresistible, for although I know it to be very naughty, a little nibble does keep Beaky as sharp as a whistle but it doesn't please her too much, in fact, it pleases her not at all.. sigh.

Moving swiftly along and writing of other things.. such as Pink Grapefruit.

She found six for a pound in the market yesterday, yes, six! Sally, Geoffrey's wife had them on their stall. They joined the bags of Mushrooms and Persimmons that she had bought from Karen.

Well.. what a surprise she got when she cut one in two this morning, for it was not at all the colour she was expecting! But Sally's label was right, for it really was a 'Pink' Grapefruit and not at all a Ruby coloured one like the ones she usually finds.

And the taste was absolutely scrummydumptious! Yumma-Yumma.. and now we are wondering where they were grown? 

She ate that and had two slices of rye toast, I had a boiled egg, my rye and sunflower seed bread, two of her crusts and a nibble, a large nibble, of her cheese. I drank water, she made a pot of fresh coffee.

Now we are wondering how to spend our day, there is loads to do at home (there always is) but a pile of ironing does not hold the same amount of interest as a trip to The British Library!

Sadly I cannot go there, so she has to remember all about it and tells me when she gets back.

But she has a few jobs to do first. There are the Celery seeds to be packed up and put into glass jars, the Lavender that she picked two weeks ago is now dry enough to use, she makes anti-moth bags for friends and our cupboards, and there are lots of trays of 'surprise' goodies drying which have to be turned. No, I can't tell you what it is, for it wouldn't be a surprise then, would it? 

A quick flap has just taken me onto her head, for I have to make sure she has not left anything out as my dictation can be a bit garbled sometimes. But as you all know, she is in control of iPad and not me, old Beaky gets bored tap-tapping and my toes are the wrong shape.

But before anything happens.. I am going to have a cuddle with my mum.. a scritch and a scratch and a diddly-datch. 

GeeGee Parrot.
August 15th, 2014.

Not a lot to report.. except that using drug addicts are not the nicest customers!

They aren't.. in fact, they are a 'flipping nightmare' which is how she described the one they had in yesterday!

Rude, demanding a discount, arrogant and totally oblivious to the fact that she was barking off her head.

Luckily they were 'saved' by a lovely woman who, realising what had gone on, became rather forceful and demanded loudly that "she shut up, let other people be served and that it would be a good thing if she left".

Oi vey.. 

What a drama and so it was a tired mama who was very weary when she came home last night, missing the bottom step and crashing down hard onto her right foot. 

Which then swelled up like an angry toad and hurt like hell, thank goodness for that old pack of frozen peas! Hygienists would have a fit, as they have been re-frozen goodness knows how many times, but they certainly saved the day or rather the night last night!

Poor old leg, so there were no gardening plans for her today and thank goodness she did not go for in the early afternoon, after a beautiful morning, the sky turned black and lots and lots of cold wet rain fell down!

There has been not a lot to report.. apart from gardening and working and seeing a couple of friends and doing research, our life has been quiet. 

But all is well, we are both at an age when 'life' does not have to be 'thrilling' all the time and even I, who never thought this would happen, go off to my bed at night quite happily.

And that is where I will be going in a few minutes time.

So we hope, Dear Readers, that you and all of your beloveds are happy and healthy, for that is all that matters, is it not?

GeeGee Parrot.
August 14th, 2014.

VIM & VIGOUR..

I am pleased to announce that she is back in the land of rude, good health. Of course, this does have its' disadvantages for me because she is working full time at the garden when she is not doing the volunteer work at the shop, but as it has been much too hot for the likes of me to be out there, I have stayed in our cool flat and dozed.

Dear Mr.Coward sang about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the noon day sun, well, he should have added gardeners to that list!

Her feet are, as normal when it is a sunny summer, striped two toned and her back and arms are as brown as a builders! She rememberw sometimes to face the sun but it is easier to work facing away from the sunshine. That way the fork doesn't go into a toe! 

The ground is as dry as an old bone! Where is this huge volume of rain 'they' keep wittering about? Eh! We have not had a drop on the allotments for about five weeks. She does not water plants or trees, the only things that get watered a couple of times are plants that she has grown at home and that get taken out to be put into the soil. 

She took five pots of different varieties of chillies out last week, very hot chillies.. yum! They will be dried and then ground up and will last us for the year.

But back to the lack of rain, this made digging up the last of potatoes this last week hard work, really chiseling them out of the earth is perhaps a better way to describe what went on! 

The Charlottes and the red Desiree have both done splendidly, the Pink Fir, well, the less said about those naughty guys the better, what a pathetic crop. Sad, as normally they are such good 'doers' but they have not been good at all this year.

Next year she will put them into back into another location, over on the other side of the plots where they did extremely well several years ago.

It is time to plant the winter crop of potatoes but the ground is far too dry, nothing to going to take in this soil, so she will probably grow them in potato planters or in buckets at home.

The herbs are just absolutely wonderful! Strong tasting, great for drying and using as medicinal use or eating. The Lemon Balm, aka Melissa, is a herb she uses a lot, she eats it, drinks it and rubs it. Then there's Marjoram, the Oreganos, several different varieties of Mint and her most beloved Rosemary, this is such a wonderful herb.

This year's Lavender crop is fabulous! With the hot sun we have had it has a good, strong smell, she cuts only half a bush at a time to allow any passing bee access to the remaining flowers, but now the Marjoram is in flower, and they love that, the rest of Lavender will be cut within the coming week.

The Celery crop is in, it is a good crop this year, she cut that yesterday. The heads are drying on paper in the sitting room. She will hang them upside down in brown paper bags, "Thank you Karen", the seeds fall out when she shakes them and into the bags. Easy-peasy!

Next to be collected will be the wild Dill, we are so lucky that this grows in several places and that we also have wild bronze Fennel, such a pretty plant. 

Goodness, it is a good thing we had a delicious supper! All this talk about seeds and other such edible things would make anyone hungry. 

For supper, I had the rest of my morning egg and several slices of my latest addiction, this being a couple of slices of steamed Courgette / Zucchini together with a chopped up Charlotte Potato, a chunk of steamed Beetroot all tossed in olive oil, black pepper with dried dill, oh slurp.

She had the same together with a few slices of some very tasty looking cold meat. 

And now as it is a few moments away from my bewitching hour, aka bedtime, I will bid you all adieu and hope that all of your tummies are as happy as mine? 

Good night, Dear Readers, good night.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 6th, 2014.

A strange day in deepest Knightsbridge.

Well, it was. She slept very badly, having had to get up twice in the night to be sick (very strange as she has a digestion made out of cast iron). 

So our weekend did not whoosh off as it usually does as she was feeling peculiar. She had not eaten anything that was out of the ordinary, just a bug I guess, which is better out than in, to put it politely.

Three bundles left with her this afternoon when she and old Wicker Wheelie creaked their way down the road to South Kensington. The bundles were full of clothes she has donated to the shop.

No point in keeping clothes that either don't fit or that you don't have a use for any longer and handbags, lots of them went as well.

Then she came home, she thought about going onto the garden, but the journey to the garden takes over an hour at the weekend and even longer now that both Putney and Hammersmith bridges are closed.. ugh.. lots of extra traffic on the A316.

And the weather is playing silly games, will it rain, won't it rain? So she decided that it would be better to go tomorrow before mid-day to pick the blackberries and, hopefully, some white figs. 

She gets up very early, makes coffee and goes outside, to smell the morning air, water the herbs and tomatoes and has breakfast with Little Dove.

Yes, Dear Readers, for he is very well and coping splendidly with his wonky toes. He has gained weight and 'thumps' his way down the steps to say "hello" to her most mornings. 

There is always a plant saucer of fresh water from which he drinks and then they have their chat.

It is very special to have gained the trust of a totally wild bird and no, I am not jealous, for I have her under my toes every day, plus I have access to proper food and water all day long.

Besides, I am usually still fast asleep, I get up at 09.00 of the morning clock.

She is going to go to bed early tonight, last night was not a very restful experience and so she will curl up with a book for an hour and then it will be lights out.

PipPip, Dear Readers, PipPip, I trust your week-end is peaceful.

GeeGeeParrot.
August 2nd, 2014.
Post Script: Yes folks, we are 2/3 of our way through the northern hemisphere's summer.