The Little Mermaid

A little while back I went to see a production of the story of The Little Mermaid staged by a Danish theatre company  in collaboration with a Swedish circus company. It was great. I think initially I was a little disappointed at the lack of costumes, but then of course it’s impossible to do circus tricks with a sequined tail. They did a fantastic job of using circus skills to tell the story, like in the scene where they silently showed the prince falling in love with the other girl, first watching in wonder as she walked the tightrope, then touching her feet with his hands as each landed on the wire, then trying to match her feet stepping on the wire with his (upside-down) and then kissing the wire as each foot left it, and then kissing the feet as she walked along. Lengthy and tortuous when I try to explain in words, poetically beautiful to watch as they did it. So very eloquently captured falling for someone – noticing them, wanting to get close to them, do the things they do, worshipping the ground they walk on, adoring them.

Now this was a staging of the proper story, not the bullshit Disney version - Hans Christian Andersen didn’t have a happy ending to his mermaid tale. The story goes: 

The little mermaid rescues a human prince after a storm, and falls in love with him. She goes to a sea witch, and gives up her beautiful voice for a pair of excruciatingly painful legs to be with her prince. They spend a lot of time together, and she becomes almost a constant companion to him, but she can neither tell him her feelings for him, nor how she saved his life. He then falls in love with another girl, thinking this is the girl that saved his life. This spells doom for the little mermaid, because as the witch has told her, if he falls in love with her and marries her, she gets a human soul; however if he marries another, on the morning after his marriage to someone else she will die and turn into foam on the sea. On the wedding night, the mermaid’s sisters come to see her on the wedding boat where the wedding party are all asleep. The sisters have sold their hair to buy her a dagger with which she must kill the prince, and so gain her life back. She can’t, or she won’t, and throws the dagger into the sea, and at dawn turns into foam. 

A proper tragic ending to a story of unrequited love.

shower trouble

Here I am again moaning about showers! I swear I’ve never thought so much about water pressure as I have here. It’s going to be one of those things, that when I am back on the other side of the world and missing this side, that will help cheer me up.

I remember being really annoyed with myself in Norwich that it wasn’t until the last week I was there that I worked out how to coax the shower into doing my bidding.  The shower was occasionally nice and hot, but more often just lukewarm. It wasn’t the boiler, because the water out of the tap in the sink was hot. It was something wrong with the tap and the settings for hot and cold (it was one of those taps that the more you turn clock-wise, the hotter the water got). I rang the hospital accommodation people numerous times, and when they finally did send someone (only 3 or so weeks before I left), he took the tap apart, but screwed it up even more when he put it back together, because the shower ended up being even less warm.

Anyway, a girl from the accommodation office suggested that I leave the hot water in the sink trickling, as she had in an old flat she’d been in, found that successful in tricking her temperamental boiler into clicking on and staying on.

Didn’t work for me. And then, after about a week of doing this, my brain went – hang on, this is backwards! First of all, I know there’s nothing wrong with the boiler. And running a trickle of hot water in the sink will reduce the hot water pressure to the shower, thereby reducing the temperature of the water in the shower…. I need to let the cold water in the sink run! And it worked.

This time it only took me about two days. Our shower is also rather temperamental and unpredictable. Usually, it runs hot – often too hot when you first switch the taps on – and usually, with good pressure. However, on the odd occasion, the pressure dwindles to a meagre trickle, and the water turns cold (not good in winter!) So after swearing and cursing through 2 showers and wondering why on earth the shower would suddenly do that, my brain again clicked into action. Try running the water through the tap in the bath first to build up the pressure (as the tap is a good meter or so closer to the ground and gravity), then switch it onto shower mode.

Works a charm. I think I should consider a career in plumbing.

There’s SNOW everywhere! I was having the breakfast when I looked up, and out the window saw some snow-covered branches. I stood up for a better look, and everything was covered in snow! A proper winter scene!

I’d been told earlier this week it was going to snow today, but everyone I spoke to (my “it’s going to snow Wednesday” – somewhere between expectant and excited) was rather pessimistic about it (“oh it won’t be much, and it’ll just be sludge – snow here is never that exciting”), effectively dampening my excitement.

But it is a proper blanket of snow over everything, maybe not that thick, but still! I borrowed Emile’s camera and took photos, I was that excited! I know, I’m such a child – but it is the first snow I’ve seen this winter, the first snow I’ve seen in Europe (how very surreal – I’m in Europe! living in London!).

Yes, it was sludge as I walked to the train station, but also magic. Everyone did say though, it hasn’t snowed like this for years! And this is one of the mildest winters they’ve had – I kind of feel really lucky : )

Additn

I forgot that it snowed in Istanbul – but that was only a sprinkling. And it didn’t leave things coated with white.

aperitifs digestifs

Aperitifs and digestifs are one of those things that are so part of being in Europe, just like having a million different kinds of cheese, and a billion different wines (well a whole bunch more than back in Oz). 

The ubiquitious aperitif in Ferrara/Venice, to have with the bar snacks I’ve mentioned before was a spritzer – but not like the white wine/soda spritzer I was familiar with – in addition to the white wine and soda, you would also have generally Aperol (which is like Campari – I say that because I’ve been previously acquainted with Campari in Australia, but had never heard of Aperol), but you could also have  – oh dear I can’t remember the name – but another spirit which I preferred. I think it might’ve been an apple-based spirit (help me out El if you read this!).

Digestifs… I tried Montenegro, and Grappa, and this other thing that was blue. I think it was berry-flavoured but I can’t quite remember what berry. But yes, bottles of various stuff get pulled out at the end of dinner parties. I was actually a bit apprehensive about trying them, and I’ll tell you why.

In Prague, the organised tour to Kutna Hora included lunch at a charming little restaurant. After lunch, the waitress came around with little shots of a supposedly traditional Czech digestif, and encouraged us to try (i.e. buy) one. The stuff was lethal. The taste was similar to Jagermeister, but tasted like it was 100% alcohol. Thank god we decided to share one between the two of us. And about 2 hours later, I needed to go. Bad. I’ve never had to go that badly, with such urgency. It wasn’t diarrhoea, but if I’d had a whole shot… who knows. Digestif my arse! I’m sure it’s some kind of joke the Czechs play on foreigners!

So yes all very cultured and sophisticated, partaking of aperitifs and digestifs!

I was chatting about magic today with one of my patients, who’s a comedian (we got onto the subject because he just recently did some gigs with another comedian who used to be a magician), and mentioned that we had seen that woman at Soho House, Faye, do some great tricks, and he was like “Faye…”?

And I don’t think I’ve mentioned before, but when we were in Turkey I caught her on a CNN show on cable TV. Some CNN presenter was talking to various magicians about magic – I think after speaking to her he spoke to David Copperfield. Silly I know but I was quite excited about that.

I went to see a patient of mine today, and found out he’d passed away. While not the first time that a patient has died on me unexpectedly, it did make wonder – not for the first time – how is it that patients who you don’t think will go, do, and how patients who are so ill/old/frail and you think surely it must be their time soon, don’t. Patients who are skin and bones, bed-bound, dependent for all care, have severe dementia, aren’t eating, aren’t drinking, are chesty, constantly needing oxygen, dehydrated, are in renal failure, any number of these, and possibly another 1 or 2 things, which make them sound like absolutely hopeless cases. Still hanging on. While other patients who are eating, drinking, chatting away, planned for discharge home even, just… go. I don’t think even their doctors can say why sometimes.

I have watched a phenomenal amount of television this week. Tuesday night I had Jane over and we watched a bit of Big Brother (already a fair bit of Shilpa vs Jade tension), Wednesday I tried to do a bit of yoga at home (didn’t get very far) while Diet Doctor was on (they put an ex Olympic swimmer on 8 chocolate bars a day and by day 8 or 9 she was retching the insides of her stomach out), and Thursday Paul was over and we watched more Big Brother. By then, the Shilpa vs Jade saga had reached its peak – I don’t know if it’s big news anywhere else, but here it’s been plastered all over the papers, and widely discussed on telly and the radio as well as lunchrooms and livingrooms everywhere, and apparently in India they’re burning BB effigies. All over, from all accounts I’ve heard, a bunch of dim girls behaving like children and bullying someone.

Anyway, to carry on with TV, after that there was a satirical TV movie (I think, might’ve been a new show, who knows) called The Trial (or Trials, can’t remember) of Tony Blair. It was mildly funny, mildly clever in some bits, but hasn’t everyone had enough of criticising the guy? It’s not like Bush, where he constantly manages to astound everyone anew with his stupidity. Anyway, shan’t say anymore because truth is I keep very ignorant of politics and ’hard’ current affairs.  

London had gale force winds yesterday. Nothing like the tornedo/cyclone that hit the northwest suburbs not too long ago but still frightening. I could feel the buildings shake while I was at work (not good!). A patient’s friend told me that her grand-daughter’s trampoline had been blown into the neighbour’s yard. I was walking home last night and everything looked fine and normal, until I came upon a tree (not a gigantic tree, but still, no sapling either) that had uprooted and tipped itself onto a building. Luckily there was no visible damage to the building. I was a bit disappointed when no one else at home had seen it!

Oh, I did take some photos while I was in Ferrara with my camera on manual mode, and although I’m sure they could’ve been better, they weren’t completely disastrous! Yeay!

The little things while I was staying with Eleonora: her mum sticking a pot of ragu outside on the window sill for storage, instead of the fridge; that they just drink wine out of normal water glasses, not wine glasses; her mum fretting over my bare feet, and getting me some flip flops so I wouldn’t catch a cold. Even funnier, Eleonora bundling me up in warm jumpers and coats – “the fog will go into your bones”. 

And she proved again what a great mother she would make when she threw all sorts of food provisions into my hands as she left me at the airport. Italian warmth!